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Transcribed from by the 1903 Methuen & Co. edition byDavid Price, . Many thanks to Norfolkand Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplyingthe images from which this transcription was made.
THE
ROMANY RYE
A Sequel to‘Lavengro’
By
GEORGE BORROW
WITH NOTES AND ANINTRODUCTION
By JOHN SAMPSON
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
LONDON
METHUEN & CO.
36, ESSEX STREET, W.C.
MDCCCCIII
p. xiiiINTRODUCTION
‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany Rye’ areone book, though the former was published in 1851 and the latternot until 1857. After a slumber of six years the dinglere-awakes to life, Lavengro’s hammer shatters thestillness, and the blaze of his forge again lights up itsshadows, while all the strange persons of the drama take up theirparts at the point where the curtain had been so abruptly rungdown. The post-chaise overturned in the last chapter of‘Lavengro’ is repaired in the first of this sequel,the Man in Black proceeds with his interrupted disquisition, andBorrow resumes his cold-blooded courtship of poor Isopel, playingwith her feelings as a cat with a mouse. The dingle episodeis divided equally between the two works; and had not‘Glorious John,’ after a series of peremptory notesfrom the author, at last consented to publish ‘The RomanyRye’ ‘to oblige Mr. Borrow,’ we had lost someof the most delightful scenes of which that enchanted spot wasthe theatre.
What part of this narrative is Dichtung and what isWahrheit has been a debated question. In his chapteron pseudo-critics in the appendix to the present book, Borrowdenies that he ever called ‘Lavengro’ anautobiography, or authorized any other person to call itso. But it had been advertised for some months as,‘Lavengro: an Autobiography’; while as early as 1843Borrow writes to Murray that he is engaged upon his life; and aslate p. xivas 1862, in an account of himselfwritten for Mr. John Longe of Norwich, Borrow says that ‘in1851 he published “Lavengro,” a work in which hegives an account of his early life.’ There is indeedno doubt that the earlier part of ‘Lavengro’ is, inthe main, a true history of the life and adventures of GeorgeB