George Borrow: The Man and His Books

From 1860 to 1874 Borrow lived at Brompton, and perhaps because he wrote few letters these years seem to have been more cheerful, except at the time of his wife's death. He is s...

In 1862, between Borrow's two visits to Ireland, his "Wild Wales" was published. It had been heralded by an advertisement in 1857, by the publication of the "Sleeping Bard" in 1...

Instead of travelling over the world Borrow wrote his autobiography and spent so many years on it that his contempt for the pen had some excuse. I have already said almost all t...

In "The Zincali" Borrow used some of his private notes and others supplied by Spanish friends, together with parts of letters to the Bible Society. It used to be supposed that "...

Borrow and his wife and stepdaughter settled at Oulton Cottage before the spring of 1840 was over. This house, the property of Mrs. Borrow, was separated from Oulton Broad only...

Borrow's principal study was himself, and in all his best books he is the chief subject and the chief object. Yet when he came to write confessedly and consecutively about himse...

The last words of "The Romany Rye" narrative are: "I shouldn't wonder if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go there." This is his way of g...

As the atmosphere of the two autobiographical books is more intense and pure than that of "The Bible in Spain," so the characters in it are more elaborate. "The Bible in Spain"...

These changes in the proof of what was afterwards called "Lavengro" were, it need hardly be said, made in order to bring the words nearer to a representation of the idea in Borr...

I do not wish to make Borrow out a suffering innocent in the hands of that learned heavy-weight and wag, Dr. Knapp. Borrow was a writing man; he was sometimes a friend of jockey...

Borrow's chief regret at leaving Russia was that his active life was interrupted, perhaps at an end. He was dreading the old life of unprofitable study with no complete friends....

Six three-volume editions of "The Bible in Spain" were issued within the first twelve months: ten thousand copies of a cheap edition were sold in four months. In America it was...

In such scenes, naturally, Borrow placed nothing common and nothing mean. He must have a madman among the ruins, or by a pool a peasant woman sitting, who has been mad ever sinc...

Early in 1824, and just before George Borrow's articles with the solicitors expired, Captain Borrow died. He left all that he had to his widow, with something for the maintenanc...

When Borrow had almost finished "The Romany Rye" he went on a visit to his cousins in Cornwall. The story of his saving a man's life in a stormy sea had reached them, and they s...

If Borrow is taken literally, he was at Blackheath on May 12, 1825, sold his "Life of Joseph Sell" on the 20th, and left London on the 22nd. "For some months past I had been far...

that he was writing political articles in 1832; and Dr. Knapp was able to quote a manuscript of the time where he says that "there is no Radical who would not rejoice to see his...

"Those who read this book with attention--and the author begs to observe that it would be of little utility to read it hurriedly--may derive much information with respect to mat...

The writing of the autobiography differs from that of "The Bible in Spain." It is less flowing and more laboured. It has less movement and buoyancy, but more delicacy and variet...

Borrow's Spanish portrait of himself was worthy of its background. Much was required of him in a world where a high fantastical acrobatic mountebankery was almost a matter of ce...

With so much liberty Borrow desired more. He played truant and, as we have seen, was thrashed for it. He was soon to leave school for good, though there is nothing to prove that...

When Borrow was in his nineteenth year--according to Dr. Knapp's estimate--he told his father what he had done: "I have learned Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym...

And now for some raw bones of the life of a man who was born in 1803 and died in 1881, bones picked white and dry by the winds of thirty, forty, fifty, and a hundred years.

At the end of these travels Borrow had turned twenty-two. His brother John painted his portrait, but it has disappeared, and Borrow himself, as if fearing lest no adequate pictu...

"Life, a Drama," was to have been published in 1849, and proof sheets with this name and date on the title page were lately in my hands: as far as page 168 the left hand page he...

The subject of this book was a man who was continually writing about himself, whether openly or in disguise. He was by nature inclined to thinking about himself and when he came...

Much more than in any of his other books Borrow is the hero in "Wild Wales"--a strange black-coated gentleman with white hair striding over the hills and along the rivers, carry...

Ambition, with a little revenge, helped to impel Borrow to write "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." Some of this ambition was left over for "Wild Wales," which he began and finish...

"Wild Wales" having been written from a tourist's note books is less flowing than "The Bible in Spain" and less delicate than "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." A man is often cal...

The Borrows now settled at Norwich in what was then King's Court and is now Borrow's Court, off Willow Lane. George Borrow, therefore, again attended the Grammar School of Norwi...

Then, on a fair day on Blackheath, he met Mr. Petulengro again who said he looked ill and offered him the loan of 50 pounds, which he would not accept, nor his invitation to joi...

"Lavengro" in 1851 and "The Romany Rye" in 1857 failed to impress the critics or the public. Men were disappointed because "Lavengro" was "not an autobiography." They said that...

The five works of Borrow's maturity--from "The Zincali: or the Gypsies of Spain," written when he had turned thirty, to "Wild Wales," written when he had turned fifty--have this...

"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" give Borrow's character and soul by direct and indirect means. Their truth and fiction produce a consistent picture which we feel to be true. Dr....