Information > The
Library and Its History
The Library Today
Photograph by
Richard Caspole
Yale Center for British Art, 1999
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The Lewis Walpole Library,
a department of the Yale University Library since 1980,
is an internationally
recognized research collection in the field of British
eighteenth-century studies. Its unrivalled collection
of Walpoliana includes half the traceable volumes from
Horace
Walpole’s famous library at Strawberry Hill and many
letters and other manuscripts by him. The Library’s
book and manuscript collections, numbering over 32,000
volumes, cover all aspects of eighteenth-century British
culture. |
The Library is also home
to the largest and finest collection of eighteenth-century
British graphic art outside the British Museum; its 35,000
satirical prints, portraits, and topographical views are
an incomparable resource for visual material on many facets
of
English life of the period.
Located in Farmington,
Connecticut, forty miles north of New Haven and within
easy distance of Boston and New York, the Lewis Walpole Library’s
collections also include drawings, paintings, and furniture,
all housed on a 14-acre campus with four historically important structures
and extensive grounds. The Library runs an active fellowship
program and sponsors conferences, lectures, and
exhibitions in cooperation with other Yale libraries and departments.
Brief History of the Library -- Lewis, Walpole, and
the Library
 Wilmarth
Sheldon Lewis, “Lefty” to his friends, began collecting
books not long after his 1918 graduation from Yale. On a trip
to London in 1923, Lewis bought a copy of John Heneage Jesse’s
George Selwyn and His Contemporaries that was full of manuscript
notes by Lady Louisa Stuart. Her lively commentary about the
people and events described in the book piqued Lewis’s
interest and led him eventually to Horace Walpole. Walpole
(1717-1797) was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s
first prime minister, and an energetic letter-writer for most
of his long life. The view of the eighteenth century afforded
by Walpole’s correspondence fascinated Lewis and led
to his lifelong pursuit of all things Walpolian. Lewis acquired
books, manuscripts, and prints as well as graphic and decorative
arts, all in an extraordinary effort to gather information
about Horace Walpole and his times, his house at Strawberry
Hill in Twickenham, his interests, and his friends and contemporaries.
Lewis spent nearly half a century, until his death in 1979,
editing Walpole’s correspondence. Fully indexed and annotated,
The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence extends
to 48 volumes and remains a remarkable accomplishment. Lewis
and his wife, Annie Burr Auchincloss Lewis, left their collection,
house, and grounds to Yale to be known as the Lewis Walpole
Library or, as he referred to it unofficially, Yale in Farmington.
Library Buildings
Photograph of Cowles House
by
Richard Caspole
Yale Center for British Art, 1999
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The Library sits on
14 acres of mostly cleared land about a mile south of
Farmington Center. The land is bordered on the west by
the Pequabuck River just south of its junction with the
Farmington River and by the remains of the Farmington
Canal that ran from New Haven to Northampton in Massachusetts
150 years ago. Nearby are some excellent walking, jogging,
and bike routes (the Library even provides a bike). Some
specimen trees of interest among the many maples on the
property are a Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia) and a healthy
American Elm. Most open land is left as field or cultivated
as lawns, although there are some courtyard gardens immediately
west of the Library Building.
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The
Library building is one of four on the site, and the most prominent
from Main Street. It is a two-story white Georgian-style
house built
about 1784 for Revolutionary War General Solomon Cowles.
It is thought that the front porch wrapping two sides of the
house
may be
one of the earliest
examples of a porch original to the design and not a later
addition. It is also believed that the intricately carved
wood paneling and trim on the
first floor interior is the work of Hessian prisoners of
war. The Lewises engaged the architect William Adams Delano
to design
their late 1920s
addition to the house to accommodate their growing collection. Next door to the Library is a simpler two-story white frame
Colonial-style house, built for Army Captain Timothy Root in
the same year as the Cowles
House. It was completely renovated in 2001 to accommodate scholars
working with the Library's collections, and now boasts nine
bedrooms, each with
private bath.
In the center of the Library "campus quadrangle" is
a small, one-story red structure originally built 250 years
ago by local Native Americans as part
of their residence. It was moved to its present location to
house an exhibit of artifacts first unearthed on the site by
Bill Day, the Lewises'
caretaker; later, Yale archaeologists organized several digs.
The Day-Lewis Museum is open from March through November for
two hours each week.
Finally, a large red barn of eight bays with full loft completes
the building complex. Originally used for agriculture and livestock,
it now houses
the facilities workshop and grounds equipment.
Selected further reading:
Notes by Lady Louisa Stuart on George Selwyn and His Contemporaries by
John Heneage Jesse. Edited from the original manuscript by
W.S. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press;
London: H. Milford, 1928
The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence.
Edited by W.S. Lewis [et al.]. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1933-1983.
W. S. Lewis. Collector's Progress. New York: Knopf, 1951.
W. S. Lewis. One Man's Education. New York: Knopf, 1967.
"Life Explores World's Finest Walpole Library." Life
Magazine, 23 October 1944, 116-117.
Israel Shenker. "Can He Be the Real Horace Walpole--or
Is He Wilmarth Lewis, a Yale Scholar Who 'Lives' in the
18th Century?" Photographs by Marvin E. Newman. Smithsonian
10:102-108.
John Cornforth. "The Cowles-Lewis House, Farmington
: the Home of Mr. Wilmarth S. Lewis." Country Life,
April 27, 1978,
1150-53, and May 4, 1978, 1230-33.
Lucy Peltz. "A Scholar's View of the Walpole Library." Nota
Bene 10 (Fall 1996).
http://www.library.yale.edu/NotaBene/nbx3/nbx3.htm
"The Lewis Walpole Library: a Piece of Yale in Farmington."
Yale Bulletin and Calendar News Stories, June 24 - July 22,
1996.
http://www.yale.edu/opa/ybc/v24.n33.news.15.html
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