The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3

Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3
Word count
1.7M words
Chapters
169

Tags

English Originals Essays and MiscellanyLiterary Figures Historical TestimonyPolitical AllegoryPortrait GalleryLiterary AnecdotePower GameLettersLife Essays18th Century EnglandSocial ObservationAristocratic Society

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3 by Horace WalpoleAuthor: Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Dec 1, 2003

Editor's review

This volume is the third in the collected letters of Horace Walpole, a public-domain eBook distributed by Project Gutenberg. Walpole was a major eighteenth-century English letter-writer, known for his close observation and agile prose; his letters range over politics, society, antiquarianism and everyday life, and are a primary source for understanding upper-class English society and literary taste in the period. This volume follows the arrangement of the first two, letting readers absorb the rhythm and period vocabulary of English letter-writing. As both historical source and literary reading, it suits readers with some grounding in British history or eighteenth-century literature, to be read slowly and selectively rather than as a continuous narrative. The electronic edition is convenient for searching and cross-checking, making it useful as a research aid or for classroom selections.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the opening pages and editorial notes to grasp the volume's time span and cast of correspondents.
  2. Read selectively by theme—political, social or antiquarian letters—rather than straight through.
  3. Keep a brief reference list of eighteenth-century British figures and events for quick consultation.
  4. Mark unfamiliar names and places, then review them after finishing a group of letters.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book an English original or a translation? According to the source, the book is in English: an original English edition of Walpole's letters, distributed as an eBook by Project Gutenberg, not a Chinese translation. Readers need some English reading ability.
Can I read Volume 3 without having read the first two? Yes, selectively. The volumes follow an editorial sequence, and individual letters are largely intelligible on their own; but people and events carry across volumes, so skim the contents first and refer back or consult reference works when names are unclear.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain electronic text, usable for reading and teaching selections. For formal academic citation, check an authoritative print edition or cite the electronic source and its release date to avoid errors from textual differences.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 Author

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) was an English writer, letter writer and antiquarian. Details of his life available on this site are limited, yet his surviving works are enough to show his literary standing. The site holds nineteen of his works, mainly the two-volume Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, the multi-volume collections Letters of Horace Walpole and The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, and the Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, included in Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century. The Castle of Otranto is often regarded as a founding work of Gothic fiction, with its castle setting, supernatural atmosphere and intense emotion opening a narrative mode of lasting influence. His letters and memoirs are lively and closely observed, and remain valuable sources for the politics and society of eighteenth-century Britain. The site classifies his works under inspirational growth, for reference.