PUBLISHED TO COINCIDE WITH THE BECENTENARY OF HORACE WALPOLE'S DEATH Horace
Walpole was letter writer so energetic and fertile that his collected
correspondence occupies forty volumes. Yet his energy and fertility were
matched by such perceptiveness and wit, and his thoughts are expressed in
such a delightful style, that the results are always entertaining, often
brilliant and invariably gripping. As the prime minister's son and an
habitue of the highest social and political circles, Walpole was well-
placed to gather all the gossip of his day, great or small, and to form
opinions on the great. As a celebrated novelist, amateur architect and man
of taste, he also had an unrivalled eye for the customs and changing
fashions of the time. His letter provide one of the most vivid pictures we
have of the late eighteenth-century Britain. This collection contains 434
letters, arranged under sixteen headings for ease of reference: Boyhood and
th Grand Tour; Politics; The Court: The Man about Town; Virtuoso and
Antiquarian; Strawberry Hill his Literary Works; his Literary Criticism;
his Family; Friends and Correspondents; Later Years; His Character; Current
Historical Events; France and the French Revolution; Social Hisory.