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The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World
Richard Burton was one of Victorian Britain's most protean figures. A soldier, explorer, ethnographer, and polyglot of rare power, as well as a poet, travel writer, and translator of the tales of the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, Burton exercised his abundant talents in a diverse array of endeavors. Though best remembered as an adventurer who entered Mecca in disguise and sought the source of the White Nile, Burton traveled so widely, wrote so prolifically, and contributed so forcefully to his generation's most contentious debates that he provides us with a singularly panoramic perspective on the world of the Victorians. One of the great challenges confronting the British in the nineteenth century was to make sense of the multiplicity of peoples and cultures they encountered in their imperial march around the globe. Burton played an important role in this mission. Drawing on his wide-ranging experiences in other lands and intense curiosity about their inhabitants, he conducted an intellectually ambitious, highly provocative inquiry into racial, religious, and sexual differences that exposed his own society's norms to scrutiny. Dane Kennedy offers a fresh and compelling examination of Burton and his contribution to the widening world of the Victorians. He advances the view that the Victorians' efforts to attach meaning to the differences they observed among other peoples had a profound influence on their own sense of self, destabilizing identities and reshaping consciousness. Engagingly written and vigorously argued, The Highly Civilized Man is an important contribution to our understanding of a remarkable man and a crucial era.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 25, 2013
There have been many wonderful biographies of Richard Francis Burton that follow the grand trajectory of his life as a polyglot adventurer, explorer, author and spy. But this is the most serious and thoughtful examination I've seen of the way he thought, particularly about racism and anti-Semitism. It's not always a pleasant picture, but it is full of nuance and offers a valuable perspective on Victorian society.
April 10, 2016
This book is a fascinating exploration of the various identities and roles played by Richard Burton. Using these roles--the gypsy, the orientalist, the explorer, the sexologist, the racist, and the relativist--Kennedy explores their grounding in Victorian culture. He doesn't gloss over any of the nasty racial beliefs Burton held or any other problematic aspects of his character. I'd recommend this book for anyone who is even moderately interested in cultural history.
February 3, 2020
A great biography of the polyglot, explorer, and free thinker. Kennedy explores Richard Burton’s life and career in thematic chapters that break down the man’s life. Highly suggest it to anyone studying the British Empire or travelogues.
July 31, 2012
A very nuanced and balanced look at a complicated character in the heyday of the British empire.
May 15, 2026
More Burtoniana. I'm dogged in my fixations, for what it's worth. I really enjoy biographies and have since I learned how to read. As a child, I managed to read every juvenile biography in the San Diego library system. I have continued to enjoy the form in adulthood, even if it was, for a long time, what they call a guilty pleasure*. Many biographies for grownups, even if they come accompanied by respectable notes, can seem a little like history-lite for people who would generally prefer a novel.
Not this slim but dense little book, written by a history professor at George Washington University. I've long been interested in Burton because his life - parts of it, at any rate - seems like a real-life version of the sort of Man-Who-Would-Be-King, boy's-own-adventure narrative that I grew up loving: stories of tough, resourceful European or European-American men encountering exotic landscapes, fierce creatures and less-than-welcoming indigenous populations. Stories of "discovery." I would venture that at least a quarter of the juvenile biographies I devoured were about explorers or conquistadors. While I did read biographies, believe it or not, of Jonathan Edwards and Maria Mitchell, intellectual history was not generally on the menu.
It most decidedly is here, though. While Burton was the very model of the kind of "man of action" that boyhood-me admired, Kennedy is mostly interested in him as an exemplar of various modes of 19th-century, British thought, particularly as it relates to the concept of human difference. The narrative of Burton's life unfolds chronologically, but the chapters are organized thematically, addressing Burton's various "identities" with respect to the variety of cultures that he encountered in a peripatetic and relentlessly curious life - the Gypsy, the Orientalist, the Impersonator, the Explorer, the Racist, the Relativist, and the Sexologist- and the ways that those identities reflected and, in turn, influenced broader intellectual currents and cultural attitudes with respect to the Other in the context of colonialism.
Burton was a bundle of contradictions. While he was open enough to other cultures and ways of being that his fellow officers called him "the white Arab," he subscribed to "scientific" theories of racial difference and their consequent expression in colonial systems of exploitation. While he was not the first translator of the Arabian Nights stories and his translations have not, I understand, aged well in many respects, his is the name most associated with them. Kennedy claims that Burton's "terminal essay" appended to his unexpurgated Supplemental Nights is the first frank discussion of homosexuality in English.
A dense, but well-written and well-thought-out and I think, mostly correct assessment of someone with whom I am more than a little obsessed and who turns out maybe to have been more important than I thought. At any rate, I'm not done with him yet.
*Only pleasure, no guilt, these days. I'm done padding my sophistication resume.
Not this slim but dense little book, written by a history professor at George Washington University. I've long been interested in Burton because his life - parts of it, at any rate - seems like a real-life version of the sort of Man-Who-Would-Be-King, boy's-own-adventure narrative that I grew up loving: stories of tough, resourceful European or European-American men encountering exotic landscapes, fierce creatures and less-than-welcoming indigenous populations. Stories of "discovery." I would venture that at least a quarter of the juvenile biographies I devoured were about explorers or conquistadors. While I did read biographies, believe it or not, of Jonathan Edwards and Maria Mitchell, intellectual history was not generally on the menu.
It most decidedly is here, though. While Burton was the very model of the kind of "man of action" that boyhood-me admired, Kennedy is mostly interested in him as an exemplar of various modes of 19th-century, British thought, particularly as it relates to the concept of human difference. The narrative of Burton's life unfolds chronologically, but the chapters are organized thematically, addressing Burton's various "identities" with respect to the variety of cultures that he encountered in a peripatetic and relentlessly curious life - the Gypsy, the Orientalist, the Impersonator, the Explorer, the Racist, the Relativist, and the Sexologist- and the ways that those identities reflected and, in turn, influenced broader intellectual currents and cultural attitudes with respect to the Other in the context of colonialism.
Burton was a bundle of contradictions. While he was open enough to other cultures and ways of being that his fellow officers called him "the white Arab," he subscribed to "scientific" theories of racial difference and their consequent expression in colonial systems of exploitation. While he was not the first translator of the Arabian Nights stories and his translations have not, I understand, aged well in many respects, his is the name most associated with them. Kennedy claims that Burton's "terminal essay" appended to his unexpurgated Supplemental Nights is the first frank discussion of homosexuality in English.
A dense, but well-written and well-thought-out and I think, mostly correct assessment of someone with whom I am more than a little obsessed and who turns out maybe to have been more important than I thought. At any rate, I'm not done with him yet.
*Only pleasure, no guilt, these days. I'm done padding my sophistication resume.
November 11, 2020
An excellent and detailed read, well written, and highly informative. Recommended.
The story of Burton analysed thematically, which is a great idea. When I was a lad I was thrilled by Burton, with increasing years his many faults became apparent. He was not a deep thinker, he flipped and flopped depending on his mood. He was a terrible diplomat, after a lifetime of complaining about professional diplomats. His treks were not as bold as he described. The pilgrimage to Mecca, was Burton uncovered and tolerated as a joke? What we can be sure of, Burton did describe many cultures in detail that would have been lost to us. He also supplied a large number of archaeological artefacts and biological specimens to science. His total influence? I am not sure.
The story of Burton analysed thematically, which is a great idea. When I was a lad I was thrilled by Burton, with increasing years his many faults became apparent. He was not a deep thinker, he flipped and flopped depending on his mood. He was a terrible diplomat, after a lifetime of complaining about professional diplomats. His treks were not as bold as he described. The pilgrimage to Mecca, was Burton uncovered and tolerated as a joke? What we can be sure of, Burton did describe many cultures in detail that would have been lost to us. He also supplied a large number of archaeological artefacts and biological specimens to science. His total influence? I am not sure.
February 9, 2023
Read this book in the one or two pages before turning out the light at bedtime fashion. I’d been fascinated with Burton after reading Candace Millard’s River of the Gods, and wanted to learn more. A Highly Civilized Man did not disappoint; written in an extremely engaging fashion (not a foregone conclusion for academic writing), it lushly details the events of Burton’s life (the good, the bad and the cringeworthily ugly) and places them in context with the Victorian era. Should you wish to know more about this fascinating man, this is the book to go to.
March 31, 2022
Its not a linear story and thats what makes it refreshing , ive read a bunch of books on burton and this one definately stands out . Author explores different aspects of his life through chapters . Its a great insight in life of my fav explorer .
July 18, 2022
Kennedy's book is a traditional biography of the 19th-century explorer and linguist, Richard Burton.
"Even as the old aristocratic system of patronage began to wane in the early nineteenth-century, a new old-boy's network was being forged in public schools such as Eton, Harrow, and Rugby." 20
"Even as the old aristocratic system of patronage began to wane in the early nineteenth-century, a new old-boy's network was being forged in public schools such as Eton, Harrow, and Rugby." 20
February 7, 2023
A very well-written and thoughtful attempt to explain and even justify Burton's ideas within the context of the evolution of British society during an era of rapid industrialization and empire building.
September 8, 2009
Dane Kennedy's biography of Richard Burton, subtitled Richard Burton and the Victorian World, is a sympathetic yet dispassionate portrayal of a larger than life character who has been both over-romanticized and vilified in various biographies and elsewhere for more than a century since his death. The explorer and author, Sir Richard Francis Burton, is best remembered today for his clandestine visit to the holy city of Mecca and his later translations of the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra. Kennedy, a historian at George Washington University, examines eight phases of Burton's public image, from "the Gypsy" to "the sexologist," with a keen eye for psychological detail. He shows how extensively Burton (1821–1890) worked to shape his own reputation by presenting himself as more of an outsider than he really was, and speculates with insight into the tension between Burton's embrace of exotic civilizations and his desire to be honored as a British hero. The book's chronological sequence has some pitfalls; for instance, a discussion of Burton's later anti-Semitic writings is separated from a long, thoughtful chapter on his pervasive racism, centered primarily on his experiences as a British consul in Africa. Many of his biographers have tended to portray Burton in Nietzschean terms as a heroic, independent spirit operating outside the bounds of social convention. Kennedy, however, sets out to counter this picture of isolation and, further, to provide insight into Burton's Victorian world. This reader sees the author achieving both aims. In seven short chapters (and an eighth called 'Afterlife'), Kennedy chronologically views Burton's peripatetic career as gypsy, Orientalist, impersonator, explorer, racist, relativist and sexologist. Burton emerges from Kennedy's biography as a man whose contribution the body of knowledge of other peoples during the Victorian era was considerable. Kennedy explains the reasons for Burton's almost manic immersion in other cultures and allows us to comprehend the concerns that characterised the Victorian engagement with difference. The result is a compact (less than three hundred pages) guide to Burton's life and his enduring image. I found the commentary on the changes in this image for better and worse over the years one of the best aspect of this biography. It has encouraged me to explore Burton's work further on my own.
January 4, 2010
Picked this up for research on a Victorian fiction project; ended up keeping it so long that the Chicago Public Library has given it up for lost. Definitely a niche subject, but Kennedy's final point--that we tend to sneer at the Victorian worldview because it is uncomfortably close to our own--is one that deserves a larger audience. It would be particularly interesting to trace how Burton's "anthropological" studies--at once admiring and condescending--shaped contemporary Anglo-Arab relations.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews