Burton and Speke
Item
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Title
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Burton and Speke
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Description
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A historical novel of colonial East Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. Explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke drink gin, hunt big game and search for the source of the Nile. Burton is depicted as possibly closeted, Speke as probably gay, but the novel’s racist and imperialist overtones are all too blatant (note the unpleasant reference to “primitive Africa” in the inside book-jacket blurb). There is in addition a deeply misogynistic streak running through the book, including an episode featuring Female Genital Mutilation. The seventh novel from William Harrison (1933-2013), it was received positively by contemporary reviewers, one crediting Harrison with “uncovering a part of lost gay history”. Unusually for the time, ‘Burton and Speke’ was not aimed at a distinctly ‘gay market’. Harrison, who was himself heterosexual, also wrote short stories, nonfiction and screenplays, including for the adaption of this book as ‘Mountains of the Moon’ (1990).
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Rights
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All images within the Seized Books! Online exhibition are to be used exclusively for the promotion of the library and to facilitate research. If you download and subsequently share any images from the exhibition website, you agree it is your responsibility to ensure appropriate usage is upheld for that image. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Copyright to content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Senate House Library does not automatically claim copyright on any images shown in the Seized Books! online exhibition.
