George Borrow and His Circle Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters of Borrow and His Friends

Borrow never had a child, but happy for him was the part played by his stepdaughter Henrietta in his life. She was twenty-three years old when her mother married him, and it is...

Borrow has himself given us--in _Lavengro_--a picturesque record of his early experiences in Scotland. It is passing strange that he published no account of his two visits to th...

From his journey to Russia Borrow had acquired valuable experience, but nothing in the way of fame, although his mother had been able to record in a letter to St. Petersburg tha...

It is a curious fact that of only two men of distinction in English letters in these later years can it be said that they lived to a good old age and yet failed of recognition f...

In 1844 Borrow set out for the most distant holiday that he was ever to undertake. Passing through London in March 1844, he came under the critical eye of Elizabeth Rigby, after...

John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that is, on the 15th April 1801. His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was wandering from town to town, and it is n...

George Borrow wandered far and wide, but he always retraced his footsteps to East Anglia, of which he was so justly proud. From his marriage in 1840 until his death in 1881 he l...

We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's possible gypsy origin in order to account for his vagabond propensities. The lives of his parents before his birth, and the s...

'Poor George.... I wish he were making money. He works hard and remains poor'--thus wrote John Borrow to his mother in 1830 from Mexico, and it disposes in a measure of any sugg...

Borrow's first book was _Faustus_, and his second was _Romantic Ballads_, the one being published, as we have seen, in 1825, the other in 1826. This chronology has the appearanc...

Edward FitzGerald once declared that he was about the only friend with whom Borrow had never quarrelled.[205] There was probably no reason for this exceptional amity other than...

We should know little enough of George Borrow's later years, were it not for his friendship with Thomas Gordon Hake and Theodore Watts-Dunton. Hake was born in 1809 and died in...

There are many interesting personalities that pass before us in Borrow's three separate narratives,[125] as they may be considered, of his Spanish experiences. We would fain kno...

George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of July 1803. It pleased him to state on many an occasion that he was born at East Dereham.

_'That's a strange man!' said I to myself, after I had left the house, 'he is evidently very clever; but I cannot say that I like him much with his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's...

The year 1854 was an adventurous one in Borrow's life, for he, so essentially a Celt, as Mr. Watts-Dunton has more than once reminded us,[222] had in that year two interesting e...

The most distinguished of Borrow's friends in the years that succeeded his return from Spain was Richard Ford, whose interests were so largely wrapped-up in the story of that co...

In the intervening eight or nine years he had travelled much--suffered much. During all these years he had been thinking about, talking about, his next book, making no secret of...

Among the many Borrow manuscripts in my possession I find a page of unusual pathos. It is the inscription that Borrow wrote for his wife's tomb, and it is in the tremulous handw...

Behold George Borrow, then, in a comfortable home on the banks of Oulton Broad--a family man. His mother--sensible woman--declines her son's invitation to live with the newly-ma...

In the early pages of _Lavengro_ Borrow tells us nearly all we are ever likely to know of his sojourn in London in the years 1824 and 1825, during which time he had those interv...

In an admirable appreciation of our author, the one in which he gives the oft-quoted eulogy concerning him as 'the delightful, the bewitching, the never-sufficiently-to-be-prais...

time. Yesterday I went to Greenwich to see the Leviathan. It is almost terrible to look at, and seems too large for the river. It resembles a floating town--the paddle is 60 fee...

Norwich may claim to be one of the most fascinating cities in the kingdom. To-day it is known to the wide world by its canaries and its mustard, although its most important indu...

The Bible Society wanted the Bible to be set up in the Manchu language, the official language of the Chinese Court and Government. A Russian scholar named Lipóftsof, who had spe...

Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Lübeck to Travemünde, whence he went by sea to St. Petersburg, where he arrived on the twentieth of August 1833. He was back in London in...

When George Borrow first entered Norwich after the long journey from Edinburgh, Joseph John Gurney, born 1788, was twenty-six years of age, and William Taylor, born 1765, was fo...

To many in our day, less utilitarian than those of an earlier era, Borrow must have been an interesting man of letters had he not written his four great books. Single-minded dev...

That George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society, then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally excited doubts as to his moral honesty. T...

Doubts were very frequently expressed in Borrow's lifetime as to his having really been articled to a solicitor, but the indefatigable Dr. Knapp set that point at rest by refere...

George Borrow's three most important books had all a very interesting history. We have seen the processes by which _The Bible in Spain_ was built up from notebooks and letters....

The holiday which Borrow gave himself the year following his visit to Wales, that is to say, in September 1855, is recorded in his unpublished diaries. He never wrote a book as...

If Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would have been quite satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a comfortable home, with a devoted wife. The question of money was no...

George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the gambler. I can find no evidence in his career of any taste for games of hazard or indeed for games of any kind, although we recal...

It is now exactly seventeen years ago since I published a volume not dissimilar in form to this under the title of _Charlotte Brontë and her Circle_. The title had then an eleme...

With the famous 'Taylors of Norwich' Borrow seems to have had no acquaintance, although he went to school with a connection of that family, James Martineau. These socially impor...

Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote from the pretty play-actor who won...

There has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the 'veiled period' of George Borrow's life. This has arisen from a letter which Richard Ford of the _Handbo...

[195] Mr. James Barren of _The Inverness Courier_ informs me that Borrow took a well-known route between Fort Augustus and Badenoch, although nowadays it is rarely used, as Wade...

George Borrow's earlier visits to London are duly recorded, with that glamour of which he was a master, in the pages of _Lavengro_. Who can cross London Bridge even to-day witho...