Search results for ""Author Horace Walpole""

"'Walpole's achievement has to be saluted all the more when it is realized that single-handedly he determined (or distorted) the writing of landscape architecture history to this day' John Dixon Hunt in Greater Perfection: the practice of garden theory" By a mile, this is the most brilliant and most influential essay ever written on English garden history. For two centuries it mapped the whole landscape of the subject. However, the author was partial in the highest degree. Horace Walpole believed in progress, in modernisation, and the superiority of everything English to almost everything that had gone before. He had a special dislike of Baroque gardens, as exemplified by Versailles, which for him symbolised absolutism, tyranny, and the oppression of nature.

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Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second is printed from a Manuscript of the late Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford. Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following Memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, "Not to be opened till after my Will." Opening the box, it was found to contain a number of manuscript volumes and other papers, among which were these Memoirs.

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When Conrad, son of Prince Manfred of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances on his wedding day, his father, fearing his line is at an end, declares that he will divorce his wife and marry his late son’s intended bride. Soon, however, this planned union brings about a series of supernatural events, tragic misunderstandings and cold-blooded murder. Presented as the translation of a medieval Italian text from the time of the crusades, The Castle of Otranto was the first and most influential novel of the eighteenth-century Gothic revival, and introduced several of what became its most recognizable tropes.

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Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second is printed from a Manuscript of the late Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford. Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following Memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, "Not to be opened till after my Will." Opening the box, it was found to contain a number of manuscript volumes and other papers, among which were these Memoirs.

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'Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions!' The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride-to-be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The publication of this four-volume edition of Horace Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George III completes the monumental Yale Walpole Edition that also includes 48 volumes of correspondence and three volumes of Memoirs of King George II.Walpole’s aim in Memoirs of the Reign of King George III was not to chronicle events year by year (October 1760 – February 1772), as he had done in Memoirs of King George II, but to defend what he called his "return to action" and to attack those who had thwarted it. Yet previous editors, first Sir Denis le Marchant in 1845 and then G. F. Russell Barker in 1894, abridged or altered much of what Walpole said about his friends and his enemies, and left out most of his lies and fantasies about the British Royal Family. These editors produced a narrative that seemed impersonal as well as impartial, the work of a detached spectator rather than a committed participant. The present edition is the first to go back to the manuscripts and give Walpole’s text in its entirety, unabridged and unexpurgated, together with an introduction and annotation designed to help reassess the value of the memoirs as historical evidence.

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Author of the first gothic novel and son of the first prime minister of Great Britain, Horace Walpole had wide-ranging interests that included literature, politics, world affairs, collecting, antiquities, and architecture, and to his numerous correspondents he wrote on these and other topics in prose that is celebrated for its charm, eloquence, and wit. This new Everyman's edition offers an extensive selection of Walpole's letters, helpfully arranged by subject so the reader can choose from themes including social life, the Court, politics, literature, and the evolution of his Gothic castle and art and book collections at Strawberry Hill. This edition offers new annotations throughout, with introductions to its various sections and a general introduction on Walpole as a letter writer. In addition, the text of the letters has been corrected and previously excised passages have been restored.

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This Broadview edition pairs the first Gothic novel with the first Gothic drama, both by Horace Walpole.Published on Christmas Eve, 1764, on Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, his Gothicized country house, The Castle of Otranto became an instant and immediate classic of the Gothic genre as well as the prototype for Gothic fiction for the next two hundred years. Walpole's brooding and intense drama, The Mysterious Mother, focuses on the protagonist's angst over an act of incest with his mother, and includes the appearance of Father Benedict, Gothic literature's first evil monk.Appendices in this edition include selections from Walpole’s letters, contemporary responses, and writings illustrating the aesthetic and intellectual climate of the period. Also included is Sir Walter Scott’s introduction to the 1811 edition of The Castle of Otranto.

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On the day of his wedding, Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. His calculating father Manfred fears that his dynasty will now come to an end and determines to marry his son's bride himself - despite the fact he is already married. But a series of terrifying supernatural omens soon threaten this unlawful union, as the curse placed on Manfred's ancestor, who usurped the lawful Prince of Otranto, begins to unfold. First published pseudonymously in 1764, purporting to be an ancient Italian text from the time of the crusades, The Castle of Otranto is a founding work of Gothic fiction. With its compelling blend of sinister portents, tempestuous passions and ghostly visitations, it spawned an entire literary tradition and influenced such writers as Ann Radcliffe and Bram Stoker.

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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.

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