Yet Borrow never repeated the success of The Bible in Spain. It took him eight years to produce the follow-up, the novel Lavengro; The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest (1851), which described his childhood and early adventures in London in similar picaresque form. This book was a critical and commercial flop. In the year of the Great Exhibition, and to a public taste that had recently elevated itself to such social works as Vanity Fair (1847-1848), David Copperfield (1849-1850), Kingsley's Alton Locke (1850), and Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Lavengro was an anachronism, without social purpose or moral message. It was twenty-one years before the first edition of 3,000 copies was replaced by a second.
The three later books published in Borrow's lifetime were equally unpopular. Yet though he died forgotten in 1881, Borrow's career has remained fascinating to twentieth-century commentators, inspiring a score of book-length biographies. His father, Thomas Borrow (1758-1824), married Ann Perfrement (1772-1858) while he was a sergeant in the West Norfolk Militia (he later attained the rank of adjutant-captain). George Henry, the second of their two sons, was born in Norfolk on 5 July 1803 and began his traveling career almost immediately as his father's regiment was posted around the country.
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