Explorer, linguist, spy, diplomat, scholar, adventurer, and swordsman, born in Devon and educated at Oxford, though he was expelled from the university in 1840. He then enlisted in the infantry and served in India. His enthusiastic "investigation" of homosexual brothels caused him to be sent back to England.

Traveller, his talent for languages meant that he was fluent in four languages and two dialects before he was twenty: he would eventually learn 25 languages and another 15 dialects. He is the first translator of the Arabian Nights (1885-88).

Burton's ten-volume translation of the Arabian Nights was privately printed in London in 1885-1886. This volume is from one of a number of limited editions, each of one thousand copies, reprinted from from the first edition by the Burton Club for subscribers. The essay on pederasty was omitted from the many subsequent commercial editions of Burton's translation.

In 1853 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in disguise, and in 1856 was commissioned by the Foreign Office to explore the sources of the Nile, and (with Speke) reached Lake Tanganika in 1858.

His first posting took him to Sindh, India. Excelling at languages, and with a penchant for disguise, adventure and reconnaissance, he made a first class intelligence officer- penetrating souks and bazaars to bring back information for his commander Sir Charles Napier.

His promising career ended however, after an assignment to investigate homosexual brothels. His report revealed the extent to which such brothels were frequented by British officers and, after Napier's departure from India, Burton's embarassing report was hushed up and his own departure encouraged.

Burton research and writing, as well as rumors spread by his rivals, led some to believe that he was homosexual, but no evidence suggests that this was the case.

He was happily married, and his wife Isabel collaborated in his scholarly undertakings. When Burton died, his wife burned his unpublished translation of the Arabian sex manual, The Scented Garden. She also burned Burton's forty years of diaries, which included descriptions of his own gay exploits.

He helped establish the Anthropological Society in London, and, as we said, he wrote best-selling English translations of the Kama Sutra and the Arabian Nights:

"Sir Richard Burton's Terminal Essay (1888), appended to his translation of the Arabian Nights, was, in effect, a history of homosexuality - the first to be published in English."

Quote source: Fone, B. Homophobia: A History. Henry Holt, 2000. p. 279

Source: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001 et alii