Alongside works by Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne, four of George Borrow's books--The Bible in Spain; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula (1843); Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest (1851); The Romany Rye; A Sequel to "Lavengro" (1857); and Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery (1862)--have been recognized as worthy of inclusion in the World's Classics series on travel and topography. Lavengro and its sequel, The Romany Rye, are, however, primarily semifictionalized autobiography and are not set beyond the borders of England.

Gypsies and philology, especially gypsy language, or Romany, are recurrent topics in all Borrow's works. He traveled widely and wrote extensively about his travels, but in only one case was a country (Wales) his primary focus, and he sometimes claimed credit for having visited places that he almost certainly never had...