W alpole, H orace

Abstract

Horace Walpole (1717–97), son of England's first Whig prime minister Robert Walpole, is often described as one of the most noteworthy and opinionated observers and commentators of the eighteenth century. His reputation as a major informant of his era rests on a profuse and highly diverse literary output, which includes a novel, a tragedy, tales, several memoirs and pamphlets, a treatise on gardening, a life‐long correspondence, as well as many other works on history, politics, painting, and architecture. Walpole's disposition towards and inclination for authorship were greatly stimulated by the establishment of England's first private press in 1757 at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham (Hazen 1942; Merrit 1907; Snodin 2009), which Walpole dubbed his ‘little Gothic castle’ (Lewis et al. 1937–83, vol. 20: 111). Walpole's press certainly allowed him to experiment with new and different literary genres; it also enabled him to test the market, to control and limit his exposure to criticism, and to refine and celebrate friendship. Walpole used the press to publish his own work and print the occasional pieces of his friends. The first publications to emerge from the press were the Odes by Mr. Gray in 1757. Many other publications would follow over the years, including Walpole's own Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland: with Lists of their Works (1758), the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762–80), his play The Mysterious Mother (1768), and his Descriptions of Strawberry Hill (1774), to mention but a few. Interestingly, there were also important works by Walpole that were not printed at Strawberry Hill, including a catalogue of his father's pictures at Houghton Hall, in Norfolk, entitled Aedes Walpolianae (1747) – which also contained A Sermon on Painting (1742) – probably printed by John Hughs, and the Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III (1768), published in London by James Dodsley. Although advertised as ‘Printed for Tho. [mas] Lownds in Fleet Street’, 500 copies of the first edition of Walpole's Castle of Otranto were printed at the Strawberry Hill Press on 24 December 1764; a second edition, published on the same site, followed in April 1765 (Frank, F.S. 2003: 44). In total, Walpole's press produced some 34 full‐length books as well as various miscellaneous works entitled ‘detached pieces’. A.T. Hazen's 1942 Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press remains one of the most detailed catalogues of the works published at Walpole's Strawberry Hill press. It was complemented a few years later by Hazen's equally exhaustive Bibliography of Walpole (1948). Together, these two books provide a comprehensive view of Walpole's formidable career as a writer and publisher.