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George Henry Borrow (5 July 1803 – 26 July 1881) was an English writer of novels and of travel based on personal experiences in Europe. His travels gave him a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe, who figure strongly in his work. His best-known books are The Bible in Spain and the novels Lavengro and The Romany Rye, set in his time with the English Romanichal (Gypsies).
Borrow studied law, but languages and literature became his main interests. In 1825, he began his first major European journey, walking in France and Germany. Over the next few years he visited Russia, Portugal, Spain and Morocco, acquainting himself with the people and languages of countries he visited. After his marriage on 23 April 1840, he settled in Lowestoft, Suffolk, but continued to travel inside and outside the United Kingdom.
After less than a year in Ireland, the regiment returned to Norwich. As the threat of war receded, the strength of the unit was greatly reduced.^ The Life of George Borrow. Fullbooks. Retrieved 24 April 2008.
With Taylor's encouragement, Borrow embarked on his first translation, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's version of the Faust legend, entitled Faustus, his Life, Death and Descent into Hell, first published in St Petersburg in 1791. In his translation, Borrow altered the name of one city, so making one passage of the legend read:
They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features that the devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town, called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday's best.
For this lampooning of Norwich society, the Norwich public subscription library burned his first publication.
He left Norwich for St Petersburg on 13 August 1833. Borrow was charged by the Bible Society with supervising a translation of the Bible into Manchu Language. As a traveller, he was overwhelmed by the beauty of St Petersburg: "Notwithstanding I have previously heard and read much of the beauty and magnificence of the Russian capital.... There can be no doubt that it is the finest City in Europe, being pre-eminent for the grandeur of its public edifices and the length and regularity of its streets."
During his two-year stay in Russia, Borrow called upon the writer Alexander Pushkin, who was out on a social visit. He left two copies of his translations of Pushkin's literary works and later Pushkin expressed regret at not meeting him.
Borrow described the Russian people as "the best-natured kindest people in the world, and though they do not know as much as the English, they have not the fiendish, spiteful dispositions, and if you go amongst them and speak their language, however badly, they would go through fire and water to do you a kindness."
Borrow had a lifelong empathy with nomadic people such as the Romany (or Gypsy) people, especially Romani music, dance and customs. He became so familiar with the Romany language as to publish a dictionary of it. In the summer of 1835, he visited Russian Roma camped outside Moscow. His impressions formed part of the opening chapter of his The Zincali: or an account of the Gypsies of Spain (1841). With his mission of supervising a Manchu translation of the Bible completed, Borrow returned to Norwich in September 1835. In his report to the Bible Society he wrote:
I quitted that country, and am compelled to acknowledge, with regret. I went thither prejudiced against that country, the government and the people; the first is much more agreeable than is generally supposed; the second is seemingly the best adapted for so vast an empire; and the third, even the lowest classes, are in general kind, hospitable, and benevolent.
The huge population of Madrid, with the exception of a sprinkling of foreigners... is strictly Spanish, though a considerable portion are not natives of the place. Here are no colonies of Germans, as at Saint Petersburg; no English factories, as at Lisbon; no multitudes of insolent Yankees lounging through the streets, as at the Havana, with an air which seems to say, the land is our own whenever we choose to take it; but a population which, however strange or wild, and composed of various elements, is Spanish, and will remain so as long as the city itself shall exist.
Borrow translated the Gospel of Luke into the Romani and Basque languages. These were published in 1838, but both translations were banned for personal sale, with only public libraries being permitted copies.
Borrow's restlessness, perhaps, led to the family, which had lived in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in the 1850s, moving to London in the 1860s. Borrow visited the Romanichal encampments in Wandsworth and Battersea, and wrote one more book, Romano Lavo-Lil, a wordbook of the Anglo-Romany dialect (1874). Mary Borrow died in 1869, and in 1874 he returned to Lowestoft, where he was later joined by his stepdaughter Henrietta and her husband, who looked after him until his death there on 26 July 1881. He is buried with his wife in Brompton Cemetery, London.
Borrow was said to be a man of striking appearance and deeply original character. Although he failed to find critical acclaim in his lifetime, modern reviewers often praise his eccentric and cheerful style – "one of the most unusual people to have written in English in the last two hundred years" according to one. Anthony Campbell (2002) – Lavengro and The Romany Rye
There are memorial marking his residences at 22 Hereford Square, South Kensington, Fjaerland Hotel, Trafalgar Road, Great Yarmouth, and the former museum in Willow Lane, Norwich. OPEN PLAQUES - George Borrow (1803–1881) In December 2011, a plaque was unveiled on a house, 16, Calle Santiago, Madrid, where he lived from 1836 to 1840. Plaque unveiled in Spain to remember Dereham-born writer George Borrow George Borrow Road, a residential crescent in the west of Norwich, is named after him. There is a George Borrow Hotel in Ponterwyd near Aberystwyth. A pub in Dereham is named The Romany Rye after one of his principal works. Own site. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
A ketch, the FV George Borrow (LT956), was named after him. Built in 1902, the George Borrow sailed until 1915, when it was destroyed by a German U-boat (the SM UB-10). The skipper of the George Borrow was Thomas Crisp, who, in 1917, would go on to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
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