BURTON, Richard Francis (1821–1890)

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First edition of one of Richard Francis Burton’s earliest books, an account of Sindh (then commonly rendered “Scinde”), published several years before the journeys for which he later became internationally famous.

Burton served as an officer in the Bombay Army and spent several formative years in western India and Sindh. Scinde; or, The Unhappy Valley draws upon those experiences and combines travel narrative, social observation, history, ethnography and Burton’s characteristically opinionated commentary on the region and its inhabitants.

Across the two volumes Burton discusses places including Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Sehwan and Thatta, together with the Indus, local customs, religions, communities, dress, landscape and political conditions. The work reflects Burton’s unusually intense interest in languages and local culture, qualities that would become central to his later travels in Arabia and Africa. Contemporary digitised copies confirm the extensive treatment of Sindh’s geography, towns, communities and customs.

Published in the same year as Burton’s Goa and the Blue Mountains and Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus, the work belongs to the earliest phase of his publishing career. Burton specialist Norman Penzer described the first edition as “very rare.”