Books: Unvictorian Victorian

BURTON OF ARABIA—Seton Dearden— McBride ($3).

To Victorians for 50 years the career of six-foot, black-eyed, hot-headed Sir Richard Francis Burton seemed more fabulous than anything discovered, by present-day readers in T. E. Lawrence. But to plain readers today his name means next to nothing. Now, 30 years after the last serious biography of "England's neglected genius," readers are offered a well-written account of the greatest Orientalist of his day, speaker of over 20 languages, uncompromising enemy of Victorian conventions, first Englishman to enter Mecca, first to explore Somaliland, discoverer of Lake Tanganyika,...