Lavengro; The Scholar - The Gypsy - The Priest

The English writer George Borrow spent his childhood following his father’s regiment around the British Isles, and he kept the habit of roaming in adulthood. His picaresque travelogue The Bible in Spain (1843), an account of working as a Protestant Bible salesman in the staunchly Catholic country, was an instant bestseller. Borrow began writing his memoirs around the time of Bible’s publication, but the work shifted to autofiction after he realized that there were events from his life he did not wish to share. He substituted fictional episodes for real ones, and the result confused readers, who didn’t like not knowing how much of the story should be taken as truth. Lavengro was printed in 1851 in a run of just 3,000 copies, and was not printed again for almost twenty years. The novel was reevaluated by critics toward the end of the 19th century, and Borrow’s details of British Gypsy life caught the interest of readers at a time when the Roma were beginning to be more romanticized than reviled. Lavengro is now considered a Victorian classic.