Borrioboola-Gha

In Bleak House Charles Dickens created the immortal Mrs Jellyby, who worries about the natives of Borrioboola-Gha while her own children fell into the grate.

Archive 2008-01-01 2008

Jutnapore must have descended in a right line from Borrioboola-Gha.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 Various

It will do us good to remember these things, and look more kindly on our brothers of Borrioboola-Gha and their fetich superstitions, when we drop our silver in the missionary box next

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers Bret Harte 1869

She was greatly occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

She told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

Mrs. Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number of letters she had lately received and answered or of the coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the king of Boorioboola wanting to sell everybody -- who survived the climate -- for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853