ABSTRACT

Victorian travel writers charted imaginative terrain on which new sexualitiesincluding homosexuality and heterosexuality-were constructed, and also contested. Few travel writers took a greater interest in sex than did Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-90), and none played a greater part in mapping and contesting sexualities. A popular travel writer and translator as well as a famous geographer, who identified himself in print as a Fellow then Gold Medalist of the Royal Geographical Society, Burton was also acknowledged as a pioneer sexologist. His travel, translation, geography and sexology were intimately related. In the geography of his travels and translations, he mapped sexualities. In particular, he mapped a ‘Sotadic Zone’ in which, he claimed, pederasty was common. There, in his most explicitly sexual geography, Burton was able to conceptualize a form of male homosexuality and chart a relationship between this marginalized homosexuality and the dominant, heterosexual sexuality of the material and metaphorical centre-England. I will argue that Burton used travel, and specifically travel geography, as a medium in which to contest contemporary constructions of sexuality, and more specifically to protest against contemporary homophobia.