expurgated version of her husband's book (Lady Burton's Edition of Her Husband's Arabian Nights, 1886). Her husband Richard Burton, explorer, diplomat, and translator of books like the Kama Sutra, was also a linguist, and his wife included some of his notes, like this gloss on "cat":
'Arab. "Sinnaur" (also meaning a prince). The common name is Kitt which is pronounced Katt or Gatt; and which Ibn Dorayd pronounces a foreign word (Kyriac ?). Hence, despite Freitag, Catus (which Isidore derives from catare, to look for), Karra or Tara, gatto, chat, cat, an animal unknown to the Classics of Europe who used the mustela or putorius vulgaris and different species of viverrae. The Egyptians, who kept the cat to destroy vermin, especially snakes, called it Mau, Mai, Miao (onomatopoetic): this descendant of the Felis maniculata originated in Nubia; and we know from the mummy pits and Herodotus that it was the same in species as ours.
'The first portraits of the cat are on the monuments of "Beni Hasan," B.C. 2,500. I have ventured to derive the familiar "Puss" from the Arab. "Biss" (fem. "Bissah "), which is a congener of Pasht (Diana), the cat-faced goddess of Bubastis ... now Zagazig. Lastly " tabby (brindled) cat" is derived from the Attabi (Prince Attab's) quarter at Baghdad where watered silks were made. It is usually attributed to the Tibbie, Tibalt, Tybalt, Thibet or Tybert (who is also executioner), various forms of Theobald in the old Beast Epic ; as opposed to Gilbert the tom-cat.'
According to her ODNB article:
'Isabel Burton worked constantly to further her husband's career. He requited her devotion with an absolute confidence that no male friend obtained from him. During the last years of his life she nursed him devotedly. Her actions after his death, however, outraged many of their friends as well as subsequent scholars, for she burnt most of his enormous collection of private papers, including his manuscript translation of 'The scented garden', which he considered 'the crown of my life'... She later claimed that his apparition repeatedly appeared to her and ordered its destruction.
'In 1891 Lady Burton received a civil-list pension of £150. She published her Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S. (2 vols.) in 1893. Drawing on material available only to her, it is an indispensable source for Burton, but it is also selective and possibly distorted. Devoting herself to his memory, she published certain of his book manuscripts that she had spared, and envisaged a memorial edition of all of his published works, of which seven volumes appeared before her death. Portions of her unfinished autobiography were incorporated into The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton (2 vols., 1897) by W. H. Wilkins... Lady Burton died on 22 March 1896 at the house at 67 Baker Street, London, which she shared with her widowed sister. She was buried beside her husband in the mausoleum, shaped like an Arab tent, that she had designed for him in the cemetery of St Mary Magdalene at Mortlake, remembering his wish, 'I should like us both to lie in a tent, side by side.'
'In 1891 Lady Burton received a civil-list pension of £150. She published her Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S. (2 vols.) in 1893. Drawing on material available only to her, it is an indispensable source for Burton, but it is also selective and possibly distorted. Devoting herself to his memory, she published certain of his book manuscripts that she had spared, and envisaged a memorial edition of all of his published works, of which seven volumes appeared before her death. Portions of her unfinished autobiography were incorporated into The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton (2 vols., 1897) by W. H. Wilkins... Lady Burton died on 22 March 1896 at the house at 67 Baker Street, London, which she shared with her widowed sister. She was buried beside her husband in the mausoleum, shaped like an Arab tent, that she had designed for him in the cemetery of St Mary Magdalene at Mortlake, remembering his wish, 'I should like us both to lie in a tent, side by side.'
Isabel's version of The Arabian Nights, "prepared for household reading," was, it turned out, not very popular with a British audience.
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