George Borrow: The Scholar, The Gipsy, The Priest

Abstract

George Borrow (1803–1881), a writer, traveller and multilingual translator, achieved enormous success with his Bible in Spain (1843), which was never repeated by his later books Lavengro (1851) and The Romany Rye (1857). The later books, however, were rediscovered by the later generation of Edwardian readers and writers, who were fascinated by the figure of “Borrow” as described in these quasi-autobiographical texts: an outsider roaming England as an itinerant tinker, making friends with the Romani and learning their language, on which he was one of the pioneer experts. The chapter investigates the fluctuations in Borrow’s popularity and the causes of the market and critical failure of his later books, concentrating on his stalwart anti-Catholicism, not unusual for a man of his times but turning out to be a stumbling block for the later readers.