"ALMOST EVERY ELEMENT OF WIT AND HUMOR, VARIETY AND CHARM, IS PRESENT"

WALPOLE, Horace. The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Oxford, Edited by Peter Cunningham. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1891. Nine volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter green morocco, raised bands, top edges gilt. $2200.

Limited edition, number 53 of only 100 large-paper copies printed on handmade paper, with dozens of full-page mounted India proof portraits.

"It is as a letter-writer that Walpole attains his highest point. In these epistles to Mann, to Montagu, to Mason, to Conway, to Lady Hervey, to Lady Ossory, to Hannah More, and a host of others, almost every element of wit and humour, variety and charm, is present. For gossip, anecdote, epigram, description, illustration, there is nothing quite like them in English, and Byron did not overpraise them when he called them `incomparable'" (DNB XX, 632). A most desirable edition of "the entire series of Walpole's correspondence," first published in 1857 (Lowndes V, 2822).

Fine condition, handsomely bound.