George Borrow was born in Norfolk in 1803 and grew up in the Norwich area. His semi-autobiographical novel "Lavengro" (1851) opens with scenes of early 19th-century Norwich — the market, the streets, the river — that capture the city before industrialisation changed it. Borrow was an eccentric polyglot and adventurer, and the book moves from Norfolk to London to the open road, making it unusual among English novels of the period for its interest in Romani culture and language.
"Lavengro" and its sequel "The Romany Rye" are rarely read today but are worth picking up for anyone interested in early 19th-century Norwich and the Norfolk landscape. The prose has a direct, slightly strange quality that is unlike anything else in Victorian literature.