The Bible in Spain or The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments
of an Englishman, in an Attempt to
circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula
was a top selling book.. Within weeks of its publication, it became one of the greatest bestsellers of the 19th century. England bought thousands of copies. American pirate editions alone ran into 20,000 copies each. It was translated into every important European tongue and was read avidly by men like Thackeray, Theodore Roosevelt, Churchill, Darwin and everybody who was anybody in that age of taste and sophistication.
Despite its outmoded title, The Bible in Spain is not a religious book, but a tale of pure adventure. It tells the exploits of the brilliant polyglot George Borrow, who was sent to Madrid in 1835 to sell Spanish language Bibles. The country was at civil war; the Church objected strongly to translated scripture; the roads were infested by bandits, beggars and outcasts. The Bible in Spain is a book which will bring you to tears and will bring you to laughter on nearly every page, and which will show you the heart of Spain as it was in its most gruelling hour.
The work is unique among contemporary books describing Spain because it relates numerous unusual personal encounters Borrow had with Spaniards, from the prime minister to beggars, and frequent encounters with Gypsies. This was the first widely read book with accurate first-hand information on Gypsies (though a more complete description is found in his first work The Zincalí (1841), which was not a commercial success). All this took place during the Carlist Civil War, during which time few foreign people traveled in Spain.
