Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org

Romani Voices

Romani lives in their own words: life stories and accounts told by Romani men and women, kept whole.

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Texts

Incidents in a Gipsy's Life — George SmithA short first-person pamphlet by George Smith, a horse dealer who presents his family as “The Royal Epping Forest Gipsies”, telling of his birth on Mousehold Heath, Norwich, in 1830, his family’s tours of Britain and Ireland and their encampment at the Liverpool International Exhibition of 1886, with a list of notable visitors and six newspaper extracts of 1886 and 1892.The Life Story of Gipsy Cornelius Smith — Cornelius SmithThe autobiography of Cornelius Smith, a travelling chair-caner and fiddler born in a tent in Cambridgeshire in 1831, who tells of his youth on the road, his conversion in 1869 with his brothers Woodlock and Bartholomew, and their years as the “converted gipsy brothers” preaching across England; published by John Heywood of Manchester and London (the Project Gutenberg catalogue gives 1890).