These two volumes of Horace Walpole's correspondence illustrate the breadth and variety of Walpole's friendships. The rakes, wits, and politicians of Volume 30 are the intimates of his younger days as an active member of the Young Club at White's and of Parliament, although correspondences with George Selwyn and Henry Fox continue until their deaths. Walpole's subjects in these letters are politics and gossip, occasionally dispensed with asperity and witty allusions to entertain Sir Charles Williams and Lord Lincoln. Volume 31 shows Walpole the attendant of wise and spirited dowagers and later, of pretty young women with good minds and literary tastes. Here he is soliciting the reminiscences of Lady Suffolk, comforting and entertaining Lady Hervey, squiring Lady Browne, teasing Lady Mary Coke and Hannah More, dispensing gaiety and gifts to all.Eighty-one of the letters from Walpole in these two volumes are printed for the first time and seven others first printed in full; the correspondences with Lord Lincoln, Selwyn, Hannah More, and Lady Browne are particularly rich in this new material. Seventy-seven other Walpole letters, although printed in supplements to the previous edition of Walpole letters, are integrated here for the first time with the main body of his correspondence, as are all of sixty-three letters to him. The appendices contain several of his biographical sketched and other writings as well as his will.
