Sir Richard F. Burton, one of the most widely traveled, best read, and most fascinating of Victorian adventurers, was a prolific writer who left enduring accounts of his journeys in India, Arabia, Africa, and North America. He brought to his scholarship and explorations a sophisticated detachment unmatched by his peers and made significant contributions to anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, and geography. His educated curiosity extended to botany, geology, meteorology, medicine, architecture, and the study of religions. A superb swordsman, he began this extraordinary career as a soldier in India and ended it in Trieste, at his fourth consular post. The avenue for Burton's curiosity and ambition was his linguistic talent: he mastered forty languages and dialects, and produced sixteen translations. The most famous of these is his definitive translation of The Arabian Nights (1885), but he also tackled materials as diverse as Portuguese poetry and Sanskrit erotica.

Translations account for...