Peregrine’s Progress

Sheltered from hardship since childhood, a nineteen-year-old gentleman leaves home to discover whether he can become the man his family doubts he is. On the roads of early nineteenth-century England, comfort gives way to hunger, danger, hard lessons, and unexpected friendships with tinkers, fighters, rogues, and wanderers.

His journey changes course when he meets a young woman raised among the Romany. Proud, quick-tempered, and determined to live by her own rules, she challenges his ideas about class, honor, and love. As the pair travel through the Kentish countryside, each begins to educate the other. He offers books and refinement, while she shows him how to survive outside the sheltered world in which he grew up.

First published in 1922, this classic historical romance blends adventure, social commentary, and a coming-of-age story steeped in a long-lost England of country roads, village fairs, highwaymen, and codes of honor.