New Perspectives on Sir Richard Burton

"A research monograph on the mid-Victorian rise of Sir Richard Burton, Orientalism and the phenomenon of the Cannibal Club is overdue as, although it has been dealt with superficially many times, there has never been a book length treatment which focuses clearly on the whole arc of its historical development and its relevance to the undercutting of the standard view of the Victorians as almost exclusively prudish and deeply moralistic about sex and pornography. Furthermore, the importance of the Cannibal Club extends beyond the subject of sexuality and into the fields of race and gender. This book length treatment would gives the opportunity to examine the ways in which this secretive men's club both reflected and helped to create some extreme Victorian ideas about race, sex and gender which, although a background theme to the more acceptable moral righteousness of the period, nevertheless has reverberated with powerful emphasis, even down to the present day. The result of this has been to create an ambiguous, but overlapping, secret place where normally 'respectable' citizens might indulge their taste for extreme and elitist views in 'deviant' but socially permitted ways"--Provided by publisher.