A Catalogue of Horace Walpole's Library, with Horace Walpole's Library by W.S. Lewis. [ 3 volumes, complete set ]

Oxford University Press, London, first edition, 1969. 3 vols, cloth, 4to, 26 cm,. xci, 479 + v, 565 + v, 542 pp. 4,019 entries. From a contemporary review: "These volumes set a high mark in the study of provenance. The particular achievement is to put into print an admirably informative reconstruction of Horace Walpole's Library. Walpole gathered some 7300 volumes (7000 titles) at Strawberry Hill.. In just over 4000 catalogue-entries (i.e., short titles of works and working titles of collections), Professor Hazen identifies almost all the original contents of the library by title, and determines the physical arrangement of the volumes on Walpole's shelves.. He traces some 1400 volumes (3000 titles) to their present locations. ..As part of the introductory material, the Catalogue prints a revision of Mr Lewis's out-of-print Sandars Lectures of 1957. In these lectures Lewis described Walpole's literary interests, and sketched Walpole's activities with respect to his library." From another contemporary review: "There is an index of owners (much swollen by the names of the booksellers who held quantities of Walpole's books after 1842) and a general index. The whole work has been compiled with a care that has defied all attempts to pick it apart.. we are never likely to get a more derailed account of an eighteenth-century collector. The reconstructed catalogue, which itself provides a standard to judge later works by, has ensured that Walpole's library, though not large, will also be the norm by which its contemporaries are measured. Top edges slightly dust-stained, otherwise near Very Good set in slightly marked and chipped dustwrappers.