Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (Yale College, Class of 1918), collected the works of author Horace Walpole (1717–1797) and created the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence. On his death in 1979, Mr. Lewis gave Yale an extraordinary research library, which included furnishing and artworks from Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s famed Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, just outside London, that was renowned for both for its architecture and its contents.
Besides the Walpolian material, the library contains related eighteenth-century books, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, and furnishings, as well as the largest collection of English satirical prints of the period outside of the British Museum.
Credits
This exhibition, organized by Joan Sussler and Anna Malicka of the Lewis Walpole Library, was a tribute to Mr. Lewis on the twentieth anniversary of his death and a celebration of the outstanding collection he created at his home in Farmington, Connecticut.