He wrote two long poems,
Stone Talk (1865) and
The Kasîdah (1880), but his best original writings are his volumes on travel and exploration, his notes and appendices to the
Arabian Nights, and his more than one hundred articles, most of them written for the journals of organizations such as the Anthropological Society, which he helped to found, and the Royal Geographical Society, which awarded him a gold medal in 1859. Norman M. Penzer's sampler of Burton's
Selected Papers on Anthropology, Travel and Exploration (1924) reveals the startling range and diversity of Burton's interests.
In spite of Burton's many achievements, his life can be seen as a record of accumulated disappointments. His mother, Martha Beckwith Burton, virtually cheated him of formidable wealth by preventing the disinheritance of her prodigal brother, Burton's uncle. In a single gallant gesture, his father, Joseph Netterville Burton, threw away a promising military career by refusing to testify against Queen Caroline in the divorce case brought by George IV in 1820, the year before Richard Burton's birth. Reduced to half pay as a result of this act of defiance, Burton's father resigned his commission and moved his family to the Continent.
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