George Borrow (1803-1881), traveller, translator, and autobiographer 1, has fallen so comprehensively from publishers' lists that one may be forgiven for suspecting a conspiracy 2. He has never featured much on university syllabuses, and it is an important fact about him that he was not a university man, but was largely self-taught, and always something of an outsider. Nevertheless. one may well ask why a writer who was at one time a best-seller, whose purple patches and choice thoughts were excerpted and anthologised many times for their wit and wisdom 3, and who had his collected works published less than a century ago in sixteen volumes (1923-4, reprinted 1967), should have disappeared from view so totally. The answer generally given is that his

oeuvre

falls between too many stools for…

2282 words

Citation: Hyde, George. "George Henry Borrow". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=490, accessed 19 March 2024.]

490 George Henry Borrow 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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