Lavengro; The Scholar–The Gypsy–The Priest.
London: John Murray, 1851.
Price: $300.00
About the item
First edition, with half titles. Portrait frontispiece. xx, 360 ; (xii), 366 ; (xii), 426. 3 vols. 8vo. Three quarters blue morocco and floral boards, t.e.g., by N. Wood. Spines sunned, else fine. Wolff 598.
Item #258811
George Borrow (1803-81) wrote a number of peculiarly picaresque novels based partly on his own life and experiences. "Lavengro" – which means philologist in gypsy – is perhaps the most famous of these. The story of a son of a military officer, the child at first accompanies his father from station to station, the later wanders according to the course of his own spirit. During these travels, he becomes acquainted and occasionally intimate with a variety of strange, eccentric, and sometimes mildly threatening characters. He becomes attracted to the study of languages (and the reader learns a great deal about these), and demonstrates his distaste for the Roman Catholic Church. The book closes with the romantic episode of Belle Berners which is resumed in the sequel, "The Romany Rye". The name Lavengro was given to Borrow during his youth by Ambrose Smith, a Norfolk gypsy who is represented in the novel as Jasper Petulengro.
