The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Romany Rye, by George Borrow, Edited by
John Sampson

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Title: The Romany Rye
A Sequel to 'Lavengro'

Author: George Borrow

Editor: John Sampson

Release Date: April 14, 2008 [eBook #25071]

Language: English

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

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANY RYE***

Transcribed from by the 1903 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library,
UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.

THE
ROMANY RYE

A Sequel to 'Lavengro'

_By_
GEORGE BORROW

_WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION_
BY JOHN SAMPSON

_WITH A FRONTISPIECE_

LONDON
METHUEN & CO.
36, ESSEX STREET, W.C.
MDCCCCIII

[Picture: Bushbury Church]

INTRODUCTION

'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye' are one book, though the former was
published in 1851 and the latter not until 1857. After a slumber of six
years the dingle re-awakes to life, Lavengro's hammer shatters the
stillness, and the blaze of his forge again lights up its shadows, while
all the strange persons of the drama take up their parts at the point
where the curtain had been so abruptly rung down. 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,
and Borrow resumes his cold-blooded courtship of poor Isopel, playing
with her feelings as a cat with a mouse. The dingle episode is divided
equally between the two works; and had not 'Glorious John,' after a
series of peremptory notes from the author, at last consented to publish
'The Romany Rye' 'to oblige Mr. Borrow,' we had lost some of the most
delightful scenes of which that enchanted spot