Wild Wales

Wild

Wales

by George Borrow

This work has been republished many times in book form and continues to prove more popular than the works of either Thomas Pennant or Richard Fenton.

Now published on CD in Adobe pdf format, bookmarked and fully searchable. You can also print out the pages if you don't like on-screen reading. An interesting and informative read and an insight into 19th century Wales.

George Borrow was born at East Dereham, Norfolk, and lived for much of his life in East Anglia. He was a pupil at Norwich Grammar School and became a respected writer.

When The Bible in Spain was published in 1843 he became a best-selling author. This was followed by two semi-autobiographical works: Lavengro (Word-Master) in 1851 and its sequel The Romany Rye (The Gypsy Gentleman) in 1857.Wild Wales (1862) was his last major work and is said to be one of the best books of its time about Wales.

In the 21st century he is still admired for his moving writings on Gypsies, and for his writings of the England of 1825, and of Wales during the 1850s. As far as Wales is concerned his writings were perhaps enhanced because of his great love of its medieval literature, and his repugnance of its darker elements. His writing style does not appeal to everyone and his works are the subject of endless discussion since it is often hard to define where his travel writing and stories of odd encounters whilst on his travels changes from fact to fiction. This uncertainty often upset his contemporaries but his basic texts remain sound.

George Borrow was a linguist of some note and he is said to have had a knowledge of around 100 languages which he could either speak, write or translate from — a remarkable feat for someone who did not have a university education.

The 16-volume Norwich edition of his translations was not published until 1923, but regardless of his abilities as a translator he covered, on a world-wide scale, a broad spectrum from the ancient and medieval to modern literature. He quoted from the Talmud on numerous occasions and his early love for Welsh, Danish and Romani caused led him to work for the Bible Society in Russia, where he edited the New Testament in Manchu. He later spent five years in Spain supervising the printing and distribution of the scriptures at the time of the Carlist Wars. Although the Bible still arouses much interest in Spain it is in England that Lavengro and The Romany Rye have found more interest, both titles having a dedicated following.

Wild Wales is another matter and was not successful when it was first published. Many travel books on Wales were written in the mid-19th century, notably among them those by Richard Fenton, Thomas Pennant, but it is George Borrows’ book which is still read and has been reprinted on numerous occasions in the 20th century. His sympathetic account of the Welsh and their way of life in Victorian times — unusual for an Englishman — and knowledge of the Welsh language and literature, mainly obtained in Norwich and London, probably accounts for his book’s popularity.

Although a keen horseman until the age of 50 he walked almost everywhere and it was commonplace for him to undertake walks of many hundreds of miles in Wales, England, Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. Few of his tour records have survived in their entirety and Wild Wales is the only complete work to have stood the test of time.

From 1860-1874 he lived in London. The death of his wife in 1869 affected him greatly and he returned to Oulton in Suffolk, where he became a shadow of his former self and died in 1881.