The material within this collection comprises of correspondence and publications by and about Richard Francis Burton and his wife Isabel Burton (nee Arundell). There are also two photographs of Burton and artefacts.

Also included within this Collection are correspondence concerning the acquisition of the material by the RAS and some supplementary material regarding Oscar Eckenstein, its original collector.

George Grenville Malet undertook the translation of Mahomed Masoom's A History of Sind. The History, which covers the period from A.D. 710 to A.D. 1590, was written in Persian at the end of the sixteenth century. Malet undertook the translation when he was Resident at Khairpur (Khyrpoor) with the assistance of Peer Mahomed, Residency Munshi. The translation was published in Mumbai in 1855, but these papers contain a handwritten manuscript of both the translation and the documentation and correspondence connected to the translation. The translation has been copied by a number of different hands. The signatures of these copyists appear at the end of their section.

With the manuscript is a letter from East India House to the Secretary, Royal Asiatic Society, to inform that the Court of Directors of the East India Company were sending to the Society a copy of the Translation and an 'Abstract Translation of a Copper Plate...for a grant of land in Bundlecund. This translation is not with the papers. The letter is dated 6 December 1849.

'Facsimiles of three Muhammedan Gold Coins, found on the Coast of Malabar with some remarks upon them'. The three coins described were thrown up during a heavy gale on the beach at the mouth of the Balliaputtan river, five miles from Cananow on the Coast of Malabar in 1818. One of them is dated AH301 and appears to have been struck at the mint of Constantine near Cordova, the Capital of a province of the same name in Andalusia, under the reign of Abdurrahman the third. The other two are dated AH407 and bear the name of Abd ul Hussein Ali. The coins were presented to the Madras Literary Society by Thomas Hervey Baber. There are a number of papers with the facsimiles. These are:

• Letter from Thomas Hervey Baber to Mr Anderson, Acting Secretary of the Madras Literary Society, dated 25 November 1818.
• A list of the Moorish Kings of Andalusia.
• A list of Khalifs. An extract from the Arabic Dictionary entitled 'Kamood'.
• Facsimiles of the coins.
• A letter from J. Stokes containing remarks on the coins.
• Facsimiles of the coins with Malayalam translations of the inscriptions.

• A letter from Mr Anderson acknowledging receipt of the coins.

  All these items and their descriptions are listed in the handwritten Catalogue of English Manuscripts in the Royal Asiatic Society . However there is also further material within the file:

• Facsimiles of the coins with English translations of the inscriptions
• A list of the names of the Princes of the Dynasty of a Fatimites
  *. Original label identifying their listing in the Catalogue of English Manuscripts.

Letter from Angus Graham to John Minford to write about a complication in the publication of Poems of the West Lake. It has been accepted by the Zhejiang Publishing Company. He asks to desert Minford and publish with the other company but that some poems could still feature in Renditions.