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Updated: June 13, 2025
Now, the writer of Lavengro has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, but would not shrink from the use of poison or calumny; and his taste has little in common with that which cannot tolerate the hardy details of a prize-fight, but which luxuriates on descriptions of the murder dens of modern England.
The appearance of Lavengro was indeed sensational: but not quite in the way its publisher had anticipated. Almost without exception the verdict was unfavourable. The book was attacked vigorously. The keynote of the critics was disappointment. Some reviews were purely critical, others personal and abusive, but nearly all were disapproving. "Great is our disappointment" said the Athenaeum.
It is my firm conviction then, that you will incur the certainty of failure and run the risque of injuring your literary fame by publishing the MS. as it stands. That Lavengro would have profited by curtailment, I stated before its publication. The result has verified my anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to make it the condition of publication.
In the midsummer of 1843 Borrow told Murray that he was getting on "some parts are very wild and strange," others are full of "useful information." In another place he called the pictures in it Rembrandts interspersed with Claudes. At first the book was to have been "My Life, a Drama, by George Borrow"; at the end of the year it was "Lavengro, a Biography," and also "My Life."
He was bent on putting in nothing but his best work, and avoiding haste. In July, 1848, Murray announced, among his "new works in preparation," "Lavengro, an Autobiography, by George Borrow." The first volume went to press in the autumn, and there was another announcement of "Lavengro, an Autobiography," followed by one of "Life, a Drama."
This would mean that for less than a fortnight's work, the innkeeper offered him ten pounds as a gratuity, in addition to the bargain he had made, which included the horse's keep. Mr Sampson has supported his itinerary with several very important pieces of evidence. Borrow states in Lavengro that "a young moon gave a feeble light" as he mounted the coach that was to take him to Amesbury.
Out of the shadow of the past there would come to him, not only the swarthy Romanies, but Francis Ardrey, the friend of his youth; the Armenian merchant, with whom Lavengro discussed Haik; the victim of the evil chance, who talked nonsense about the star Jupiter and told him that “touching” story of his fight against destiny; the Rev. Mr.
Knapp gives four instances of his underestimating it by two and even five years. Whatever may be the explanation of this, after three years' work at "Lavengro" he "will not be hurried for anyone."
The other, unguessed at by many, in whatever places were still vacant of shriek and rattle, drowsed on as of old: the England of heath and common and windy sheep down, of by-lanes and village-greens the England of Parson Adams and Lavengro.
Defending himself against the critics who attacked him for intermingling truth and fiction in “Lavengro,” he afterwards wrote: “In the preface ‘Lavengro’ is stated to be a dream; and the writer takes this opportunity of stating that he never said it was an autobiography; never authorised any person to say that it was one; and that he has in innumerable instances declared in public and in private, both before and after the work was published, that it was not what is generally termed an autobiography: but a set of people who pretend to write criticisms on books, hating the author for various reasons, amongst others, because, having the proper pride of a gentleman and a scholar, he did not in the year 1843, choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in London, and especially because he will neither associate with, nor curry favour with, them who are neither gentlemen nor scholars—attack his book with abuse and calumny.”
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