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The George Borrow Society exists to promote the life and works of the nineteenth-century author, traveller, translator, and philologist George Henry Borrow (1803-1881).

Borrow originally found fame after the publication of The Bible in Spain, a lively account of the five years he spent in the 1840s working and travelling in Spain. The book was an instant success and even outsold Dickens.

He is famous for his rapport with the Romani or Gypsy people and they feature prominently in his autobiographical novels Lavengro and The Romany Rye. At an early age he befriended one of the English Gypsy families and learned their language. He was a self-taught linguist who translated poetry from over forty languages. 

Borrow was a commanding presence, very tall and strong with snow-white hair, and was a keen boxer, walker, and swimmer. In later life he walked all over the British Isles - his travelogue Wild Wales is the result of one of these walks.

Borrow’s books often break the mould of expected structure, containing a mixture of genres and styles, merging fact and fiction, coming to an abrupt end or veering off at a wild tangent. As such, he can now feel more modern than his more traditional Victorian contemporaries.

Borrow is unique, a genuinely original voice. There is nobody else in English literature like Borrow, and he is like nobody else.

Please see Ten Reasons to Read George Borrow.