Manuscripts
Arabian Nights: Vols. 5-7. RBL 20 - 21
- Description
- This collection consists mainly of manuscripts, correspondence, drawings, printed material, and catalogues related to Burton's work and interest with swords, fencing, and his interest in Middle Eastern poetry and history; the collection contains research material and early drafts of Burton's The Book of the Sword, Vols. I-III, and To the Gold Coast. The correspondence includes letters from, among others, Verney Lovett Cameron, Richard S. Charnock, Chatto & Windus, Dominic E. Colnaghi, Alexander Fergusson, Violet Greville, John Latham, Augustus H.L. Pitt-Rivers, Bernard Quaritch, William Tinsley, H. Schütz Wilson, Henry Yule and Hermann Zotenberg.
- Production date
- 1842-1947.
- Call number
- mssRBL
- Provenance
- Acquired from The Christensen Fund, Nov. 1997. At the time of Isabel Burton's death in 1896, the main part of Richard Burton's surviving manuscripts and library were deposited at the Central Library, Kensington; in 1955, the Royal Borough of Kensington gave the library to the Royal Anthropological Institute for safe-keeping. In 1986, The Christensen Fund acquired the entire library from the R.A.I., and deposited it at the Huntington Library, until November 1997, when The Christensen Fund formally gave the manuscripts and 2,500-volume library to the Huntington Library.
