The Kama Sutra and Ananga Ranga (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

Sir Richard Francis Burton was born in the English seaside resort town of Torquay in 1821. Throughout his varied and fascinating career as an explorer and linguist, soldier and swordsman, travel writer and polymath Orientalist, translator and poet, geographer and anthropologist, archaeologist and geologist, and-toward the end of his life-diplomat and consul, Burton spent a great deal of his time searching out and documenting erotic customs and translating erotic literature from societies all over the globe. As co-founder of the Anthropological Society of London, he helped establish an institutional forum for the scientific study of sexuality.

Kama Sutra is a compilation of timeless wisdom from the third century AD about the arts of pleasurable living. It contains detailed advice on topics ranging from attraction, courtship, seduction, marriage, and sexual union. Written twelve hundred years later, the Ananga Ranga is an updated version, drawing extensively upon the cornucopia of sexual positions that the Kama Sutra first proposed. Their sexual candor, along with vivid descriptions of sexual positions, make the Kama Sutra and the Ananga Ranga indispensable guides to couples seeking to enhance their sexual relationship.