⇒ PDF A Rage to Live A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton Mary S Lovell 9780393320398 Books

A Rage to Live A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton Mary S Lovell 9780393320398 Books

Download As PDF : A Rage to Live A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton Mary S Lovell 9780393320398 Books

A Rage to Live A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton Mary S Lovell 9780393320398 Books

I knew next to nothing about the exploration of the Middle East or Africa during the mid- to late-1800's before I read this book. Obviously, that meant I knew nothing about Richard or Isabel Burton, the primary subjects of the book.

I really appreciated the thoroughness of the author’s research. Every single available detail of the Burton’s lives from beginning to end is included or at least referenced in the book. Very often, the author includes detailed explanations as to where she acquired the source material, giving the book a true feeling of authenticity which is often lacking in biographies.

This book should have been a 5-star book, but by the time I was halfway through it, I was seriously considering stopping, and by the time I was finally finished, I nearly hated it. I normally love to read historical biographies. I am not a historian, so I fully expect to come across terms, names, cities, etc. that I won’t be familiar with. As I read, I keep a list of names/terms I don’t recognize so I can look them up later.

This book gets 3 stars primarily because I had to look up nearly 1,000 terms (I kept my list for reference) while reading the book. The author constantly used archaic, outdated, and obscure terminology; she referenced names of people and places with no follow-up; she threw in hundreds of foreign words without corresponding translations. I was frustrated and irritated with constantly having to stop and Google words like Bashi-bazouk, Biafra, gazetted, Hajji, orchitis, and Sufism. A glossary or explanatory footnotes is sorely needed.

The book also gets 3 stars because it is, quite simply, too long. The author should have decided whether she was writing biographies (which would certainly reference adventures), or a detailed description of Richard Burton’s explorations. She swings from detailed personal information about Richard or Isabel, to long and overly-specific passages about an individual adventure. The book is really two books in that sense, which makes it too long and added to my frustration when reading it.


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A Rage to Live A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton Mary S Lovell 9780393320398 Books Reviews

Although I thought this book could have been severely edited the amazing personality and achievements of Richard Burton kept me riveted.
Brilliant!!! So well researched, supplants all previous biogrraphies.
An extraordinary couple - even more so than I previously had thought. Courage, craziness, prejudice, intellect, arrogance - this exciting work, fruit of much research, seems at times to be almost a 'fiction page turner' .
A thoroughly researched, thoughtfully and intelligently written work about one of the great, but controversial men of the Victorian Era and of the wife who appears to have been his soul mate. This is an incredible love story, expressing, loyalty, fortitude, endurance and mutual support through many highs and lows.
At last a good Bio of Sir Richard and his wife. As I thought she was truly his friend and companion as he was to her. A solid good marriage that speaks to love that Isabel had for him and her illness and real joy to join her husband in which became their travel`s.
So well researched it seems and a fascinating read about exciting, brilliant Burton and his also amazing wife so totally under rated in those awful times for women in the Victorian age. What incredible and courageous travels. Excellent copy from Library.
The Greeks call it "carisma", and only a few are born with it. Magic, passion, intensity it reaches a kind of desperation. Mary S. Lovell, true to form, has captured in exquisite detail the minutiae that sweeps the reader into another dimensión, and in Burton's case the layers build, one over the other. He was a linguist of astonishing capabilities and spoke over 30 languages, many of them uncommon. He was a scholar, capable of exhaustive research, which he then discarded to follow his own instincts and reach new heights. He was an author and translator, of incredible sensibility, entering the mind of the author of the original text, in order to recreate it in dazzling prose in one or many other languages. He was an adventurer of outrageous daring his journey into Mecca became legend, an infidel disguised as an Arab merchant, his skin, his eyes transformed, and circumcised, of course. He was a sensualist. He never tired of exploring the realms within the human body. He was an explorer, an expert administrator of men and supplies, a scientist adept with instruments if available and improvisations if not. He was charged, he was driven, he was explosive, he lit up the room he entered and excited everyone he touched. But did his gifts, talent, wisdom and experience lead him to prodigies of achievement? Quite the opposite. He made one fatal mistake and was condemened to mediocrity. He was one of the great African explorers, bound for the source of the Nile (see "The Shameless Full Moon, Travels in Africa"), he had to remain by the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the shadow of the equatorial Mountains of the Moon and reconnoitre with Speke the mysterious lake that lay just north of his camp. But he was ill, and ego-driven, and angry, he had been drugged by a native tribe, he was disoriented and dismayed, and he decided to return to Zanzíbar and the coast. He would be vindicated, Lake Victoria was indeed not the only source of the Nile, but it would serve him poorly; he lived out his life in the shadow of his error of judgement, a modest consul in Damascus (see "Travels in Syria, A Love Story" and Mary S. Lovell's biography of Jane Digby), and would end his life in a modest posting in Trieste yet his translations of "The Perfumed Garden" and "The Arabian Nights" are unsurpassed. The title of this biography “Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please/ With too much spirit to be e'er at ease/ With too much quickness ever to be taught/
With too much thinking to have common thought/You purchase pain with all that joy can give/ And die of nothing but a rage to live.” ― Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
I knew next to nothing about the exploration of the Middle East or Africa during the mid- to late-1800's before I read this book. Obviously, that meant I knew nothing about Richard or Isabel Burton, the primary subjects of the book.

I really appreciated the thoroughness of the author’s research. Every single available detail of the Burton’s lives from beginning to end is included or at least referenced in the book. Very often, the author includes detailed explanations as to where she acquired the source material, giving the book a true feeling of authenticity which is often lacking in biographies.

This book should have been a 5-star book, but by the time I was halfway through it, I was seriously considering stopping, and by the time I was finally finished, I nearly hated it. I normally love to read historical biographies. I am not a historian, so I fully expect to come across terms, names, cities, etc. that I won’t be familiar with. As I read, I keep a list of names/terms I don’t recognize so I can look them up later.

This book gets 3 stars primarily because I had to look up nearly 1,000 terms (I kept my list for reference) while reading the book. The author constantly used archaic, outdated, and obscure terminology; she referenced names of people and places with no follow-up; she threw in hundreds of foreign words without corresponding translations. I was frustrated and irritated with constantly having to stop and Google words like Bashi-bazouk, Biafra, gazetted, Hajji, orchitis, and Sufism. A glossary or explanatory footnotes is sorely needed.

The book also gets 3 stars because it is, quite simply, too long. The author should have decided whether she was writing biographies (which would certainly reference adventures), or a detailed description of Richard Burton’s explorations. She swings from detailed personal information about Richard or Isabel, to long and overly-specific passages about an individual adventure. The book is really two books in that sense, which makes it too long and added to my frustration when reading it.