George Henry Borrow

George Henry Borrow 1803-81, English writer and traveler. He led a nomadic life in England and on the Continent, where he was a translator and agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society. His friendship with the Gypsies, whose language he learned, resulted in The Zincali; or … the Gypsies of Spain (1841). Although his most famous book is The Bible in Spain (1843), his best is probably the autobiographical Lavengro (1851), with its sequel, Romany Rye (1857). All Borrow's works are based on his wanderings.

Bibliography: See Norwich edition of his works (16 vol., 1923-24); D. Willams, A World of His Own (1982); M. Collie and A. Fraser, George Borrow: A Bibliographic Study (1984).

Borrow, George Henry (1803–81), traveller and author of The Romany Rye (1857). He was an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society and translated portions of Scripture into various little-known languages. The Bible in Spain (1843) became popular through its picturesque narrative.

Borrow, George Henry (1803–81), edited Celebrated Trials, and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence (1825), an impressive piece of hack-work undertaken for a London publisher, and then travelled through England, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and in the East, studying the languages of the countries he visited. He published a number of books based in part on his own life, experiences, and travels: The Zincali, or an account of the Gypsies in Spain (1841), The Bible in Spain (1834), Lavengro (1851), The Romany Rye (1857), and Wild Wales (1862). His works have a peculiar picaresque quality, and contain vivid portraits of the extraordinary personages he encountered; his own personality also emerges with much force. Though physically robust, he had suffered since his youth from bouts of manic depression that he referred to as ‘the Horrors’ which often temporarily frustrated him. In Lavengro, The Romany Rye, and The Bible in Spain fact is inextricably combined with fiction; and Lavengro he himself describes as ‘a dream partly of study, partly of adventure’.