The Project Gutenberg eBook, Isopel Berners, by George Borrow, Edited by
Thomas Seccombe

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Title: Isopel Berners
The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825

Author: George Borrow

Editor: Thomas Seccombe

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [eBook #18400]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ISOPEL BERNERS***

Transcribed from the 1901 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org

ISOPEL BERNERS

BY
GEORGE BORROW

_The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825: An
Episode in the Autobiography of George Borrow_.

THE TEXT EDITED WITH
INTRODUCTION & NOTES BY
THOMAS SECCOMBE
AUTHOR OF "THE AGE OF JOHNSON"
ASSISTANT EDITOR OF THE DICTIONARY
OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY

LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1901

_Printed by Hazell_, _Watson & Viney_, _Ld_., _London and Aylesbury_.

INTRODUCTION.

I.

The last century was yet in its infancy when the author of _The Romany
Rye_ first saw the light in the sleepy little East Anglian township of
East Dereham, in the county distinguished by Borrow as the one in which
the people eat the best dumplings in the world and speak the purest
English. "Pretty quiet D[ereham]" was the retreat in those days of a
Lady Bountiful in the person of Dame Eleanor Fenn, relict of the worthy
editor of the _Paston Letters_. It is better known in literary history
as the last resting-place of a sad and unquiet spirit, escaped from a
world in which it had known nought but sorrow, of "England's sweetest and
most pious bard," William Cowper. But Destiny was weaving a robuster
thread to connect East Dereham with literature, for George Borrow {1} was
born there on July 5th, 1803, and, nomad though he was, the place was
always dear to his heart as his earliest home.

In 1816, after ramblings far and wide both in Ireland and in Scotland,
the Borrows settled in Norwich, where George was schooled under a master
whose name at least is still familiar to English youth, Dr. Valpy
(brother of Dr. Richard Valpy). Among his schoolfellows at the grammar
sch