Volume 46, Number 6 · April 8, 1999
Sheep in Wolf's Clothing
By David Gilmour
A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton
by Mary S. Lovell
Norton, 910 pp., $39.95
Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), the explorer, writer, sexologist, and linguist, has not lacked biographers. Three decades ago, Graham Greene hailed the eleventh account of his life as 'by far the best, and surely the final, biography.' In a competition for inaccurate prophecy, this could be a winner. Since Fawn Brodie's The Devil Drives appeared in 1967, there have been at least six further Lives, culminating (for the moment) in Mary Lovell's vast dual biography of Burton and his wife, Isabel. No comparable figure, not even T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), has received so much attention.
Review, 3828 words
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