The letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford

Edited by Peter Cunningham,. Now first chronologically arranged. London : Richard Bentley, 1891. Nine volumes, octavo, finely bound by Riviere & Son in full polished tan calf, their binder’s stamps to versos of front free endpapers, decorative gilt borders, spines in compartments with raised bands, glued and decorated in gilt, contrasting morocco title labels lettered in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers, finely steely engraved frontispieces and plates, a most handsome set.

Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717 –  1797) was an English writer, parliamentarian and aristocrat, notable for being the author of the first gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764). The youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, Horatio Walpole was a prolific letter writer within elite English social circles, and his letters are considered a primary resource for the study of social relationships, politics and art within Georgian society.