Lavengro (1930) — George Borrow (Everyman’s Library)

ISBN: none • Condition: Good • Sold by Crappy Old Books™

Meet Lavengro: scholar by inclination, gypsy by invitation, priest by argument—depending on which chapter you catch him in and how recently he’s been punched. Borrow’s cult-classic picaresque wanders England the way a bright, distractible magpie wanders a picnic: sampling boxing matches, roadside sermons, alehouse gossip, philology, alchemy of the home-made kind, and the Romany tongue—pocketing anything that glitters and calling it literature (correctly).

Think of it as a travelogue where the map keeps changing languages. Our nameless narrator (who looks suspiciously like George Borrow) collects words the way other men collect bruises, conducting fieldwork in the university of hedgerows. One moment he’s extolling etymologies; the next he’s learning how to take a punch from a gentleman with very decided views about vowels. The plot meanders with purpose, like a canal: slow, reflective, and suddenly full of activity when a barge horse gets ideas.

This Everyman’s Library edition from 1930 wears its serious classic clothes with a wink—the famous laurel border, the dignified type, and (because Everyman knew how to season a feast) an introduction by Thomas Seccombe to tell you what you’ve just read before you’ve read it. The book is gloriously itself: half memoir, half tall tale, entirely allergic to hurry. If you’ve ever wanted a novel that pauses mid-adventure to debate the correct use of a verb form and then goes off to buy a meat pie—welcome home.

As for this copy: Good in the Crappy Old Books™ sense—which is to say, tried, trusted, and tactfully age-kissed. Expect a firm text block, the occasional foxing freckle (vintage beauty mark), and a wrapper that’s done a respectable amount of living. The kind of book that looks right on a desk next to a fountain pen that only writes on Tuesdays.

Read it for the punch-ups; stay for the prose that can turn on a sixpence and quote three languages while doing so. File under Wayfaring & Word-Hoarding, with cross-references to Street Theology, Field Linguistics, and Unexpected Friendships with People Who Keep Ferrets. Then leave it out where visitors can see it; they’ll think you’re preparing to run away with the circus or, worse, the Oxford English Dictionary. Either way, they’ll be correct.

Has a paper dust jacket but its been repairs with cellotape and has a bit missing from the bottom spine.

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