Lot Essay
Lady Isabel Burton was the wife of the celebrated orientalist and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). She shared in much of his travelling and writing but burned his diaries, with other papers including his unfinished manuscript for a revised edition of The Perfumed Garden, after his death in Trieste. The Reverend Henry Cofferton, of St George's Cathedral, Southwark, was one of the executors of her will.