W. S. Lewis – författare

The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, encompasses as it does politics, society, literature, the arts, and antiquarianism, constitutes a conspectus of the life and thought of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the serious student of the time, whatever his field of interest, will find that Walpole and his correspondents have said something, perhaps a great deal, about it. The emphasis in this edition of Walpole correspondences is upon their value to scholars as the most informative record in letters of his time.

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.

One of Walpole's longest and liveliest correspondences was the Lady Ossory (formerly Duchess of Grafton), providing her, in her country retirement, a dazzling narrative of London's social life from 1761 until Walpole's death in 1797. The letters are in his happiest vein; in them he "most consciously practised the art of letter-writing." Of the 450 letters, including some written by Walpole to her husband and daughter, 48 are here printed for the first time, one them being the only survivint letter written to him by Lady Ossory. Commenting on the series, the Times Literary Supplement has said, "The editing of the volumes is as fine as ever: the notes are as illuminating and erudite, the result of an almost incredible thoroughness of research.