George Borrow in East Anglia

William A. Dutt's 1896 portrait of George Borrow traces the literary wanderer back to his roots in the wind-swept marshes and open heaths of East Anglia. Born near Norwich in 1803, Borrow would become England's most eccentric adventurer, a master of languages who walked among Romani caravans and translated Gypsy songs while the country watched. Dutt excavates the formative years: the boy's first encounters with travelling people, his childhood wanderings across the Broads, the landscapes that would later populate masterpieces like 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye.' This is less a conventional biography than a topographical pilgrimage, tracing how a particular corner of England produced one of literature's great loners. For readers who have ever felt the pull of the open road, or who want to understand the raw material that shaped Borrow's singular voice, Dutt offers a window into the places that made a wandering man.