Research > Library Collections
Books
and Other Printed Texts
 Like all materials in the collections of the
Lewis Walpole Library, the books and pamphlets record and support
the ideas and culture of eighteenth-century Britain, focusing
particularly on Horace Walpole and his world. Holdings cover
such topics as Walpole and his friends, associates, and contemporaries;
politics, history, geography, and travel; Great Britain; antiquarianism;
bibliography; art, music, literature, and drama. Formats range
from books and pamphlets to trade cards, almanacs, broadsides,
periodicals, and maps.
The Library is perhaps best known for its
collection of approximately two-thirds of the traceable (and
half of the known) volumes once belonging to Horace Walpole,
numerous editions of his own works as well as those printed
at his Strawberry Hill Press, and copies of each edition of
the 1842 Sale catalogue. Highlights of a rich collection of
extra-illustrated volumes include several copies of Walpole's Catalogue
of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, his Description
of the Villa, the 1842 Sale catalogue, Seeley's Horace
Walpole and His World, and Pennant's Journey
from London to the Isle of Wight, to name but a
few.
The books are cataloged in Orbis,
Yale's online library catalog, and the Walpole and Strawberry
Hill items are described in detail in the bibliographies listed
below. Indices to other printed materials are available at
the Library in Farmington.
Selected further information:
Allen Tracy Hazen. A Catalogue of Horace Walpole's Library.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969.
Allen Tracy Hazen. A Bibliography of Horace Walpole.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.
Allen Tracy Hazen. A Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill
Press. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.
[return to top]
Manuscript
Materials
 |
From Horace Walpole's Books
of Materials,
volume 1, 1759, (Hazen 2615) in his hand. |
The manuscript collections at the Lewis Walpole
Library provide invaluable insight into eighteenth-century
life.
Well known for the approximately 3000 letters
to and from Horace Walpole and a further 3000 photostats and
transcripts of letters from other collections which together
have been published in the Yale Correspondence, the
Library also holds other manuscript materials by or related
to Horace
Walpole. Among them are manuscript copies of Aedes
Walpolianae and the Mysterious Mother, as well
as Walpole's
Commonplace Books, Books of Materials, and Miscellany,
and many books and examples of graphic art bearing annotations
in his
hand.
Other manuscripts include significant holdings
of personal and official diplomatic correspondence from eighteenth-century
notables such as Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams and Edward Weston;
letters to and from friends and relatives of Horace Walpole
such as Anne Seymour Damer, Lady Diana Beauclerk, Agnes and
Mary Berry, and the Clement family; and diaries and memoirs
of Lady Mary Coke, Mme du Deffand, George Bubb Dodington,
and the Rev. Dr. John Trusler. Although only
a small portion of the collection has been cataloged in Orbis,
the Yale University online catalog, the rest is accessible
through a number of card indices at the Library in Farmington.
Also included in the holdings are account
and receipt books, bills and other documents of household and
merchant establishments, as well as travel diaries and poems.
Among the literary manuscripts is Louis XVI's autograph manuscript
translation of Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts on the
Reign of Richard III. The Library also holds a ten-volume collection
of mostly Italian music manuscripts compiled by Thomas Gray.
The provenance and scope of the manuscript
collections are described in “The Manuscript Collections
at the Lewis Walpole Library,” an article by Warren Hunting
Smith assisted by Catherine Jestin and Karen V. Peltier, that
appeared in the Yale University Library Gazette (56:3-4
[April 1982], 53-60).
[return to top]
Prints,
Drawings, and Paintings
 |
James Gillray.
Plumb Pudding in Danger or State Epicures Taking un Petit Souper.
February 26, 1805.
Etching with original hand coloring. |
The Lewis Walpole Library houses a significant
collection of fine and graphic arts. The prints and drawings
make up one of the most important collections of eighteenth-century
British visual satire anywhere and include many important works
by William Henry Bunbury, George Woodward, James Gillray, and
Thomas Rowlandson; it is the largest such collection outside
the United Kingdom. The Library also holds the most complete
collection of fine-impression prints by William Hogarth in
the United
States. The roughly 30,000 works on paper include over 10,000
caricatures and satirical prints, important holdings of drawings,
and portrait and topographical prints.
Portrait miniatures and oil paintings, many
in fine examples of period frames, include Allan Ramsay’s
portrait of Horace Walpole, portraits of members of his family
and friends, and paintings of Strawberry Hill and Twickenham.
Many prints, drawings, and paintings now in
the Lewis Walpole Library once belonged to Horace Walpole and
often include annotations in his own hand.
For more information about the prints, drawings,
and paintings in the collection please contact the curator:
Cynthia Roman
cynthia.roman@yale.edu
860-677-2140
[return to top]
Decorative
Arts
 Fulfilling his intention to recreate a piece
of the eighteenth century in his Farmington house, W. S. Lewis
assembled a number of significant works of art and other objects
from Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s “little Gothic
castle” in Twickenham. These items demonstrate Walpole’s
own wide-ranging collecting interests as well as his adaptation
of Gothic elements for the interior decoration of Strawberry
Hill. Foremost among these objects are four of the eight Gothic
chairs designed by Richard Bentley in 1755 for Walpole’s
Great Parlour, and the Beauclerk Cabinet, designed and built
by Edward Edwards in 1784 to display drawings and designs by
Walpole’s friend Lady Diana Beauclerk, an amateur artist
whom he greatly admired. Several of her drawings, as well as
designs for Wedgwood, are set into the cabinet’s door
and walls. Also at Farmington are two of the dozen settees
that graced Strawberry Hill’s Long Gallery, and a lantern
that in Walpole’s day shed “the most venerable
gloomth” on his staircase. The Library’s Strawberry
Hill collection also includes a Boulle coffer on stand, several
examples of stained glass, the gold snuffbox left to Walpole
by Mme du Deffand, and one of his cribbage boards.
[return to top]
|
