Footnotes

HORACE WALPOLE'S AUTOGRAPH TITLE PAGE FOR THE FIRST 'GOTHIC' NOVEL.

The Castle of Otranto was published in the last week of 1764 (although the first edition bears the date 1765) during Walpole's tenure as MP for King's Lynn. The first edition purported to be a translation by one William Marshal based on a manuscript written at Naples in 1529 by Onuphrio Muralto. According to the preface it had been recently discovered in the library of 'an ancient Catholic family in the north of England'. Inspired by a nightmare suffered at his villa Strawberry Hill, Walpole's Gothick fantasy near the Thames, the story blends elements of realist fiction with the supernatural and fantastical, laying down many of the tropes that would become typical of the Gothic genre. Walpole's friend Thomas Gray reported to him that at Cambridge the book made 'some of them cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o'nights' (Introduction, The Castle of Otranto, London, 1901).

Our manuscript would seem to be a curious hybrid of the title page of the first and second editions. It includes an appropriate quotation from Horace's Ars Poetica ('like the dreams of a sick person, senseless images are fashioned in such a way that neither head nor foot can be associated in a single shape') which does not appear in the first edition. The verse (a shortened version of that written here) and the crucial word 'Gothic' are additions to the second edition. However, our page does include the reference to William Marshal, which appeared in the first. This was removed from the second edition once the book was received favourably by the public and Walpole felt confident enough to acknowledge the work as his own: '...it is fit that he [the author] should ask pardon of his readers for having offered his work to them under the borrowed personage of a translator. As diffidence of his own abilities, and the novelty of the attempt, were his sole inducements to assume that disguise...' (Walpole's Preface to the Second Edition). Whilst Walpole later lambasted Chatterton for attempting to deceive him over the Rowley manuscripts (see lot 57), the fact that he initially hid the authorship of his own novel reveals that he too was capable of a literary deception.

It may be that this leaf is Walpole's attempt at a proposed (and unrealised) title page for the second edition or perhaps it was written out for presentation. It almost certainly came into Lady Lewis' collection from the collection of Walpole manuscripts bequeathed to her by Mary Berry in 1852. In her journal, Mary Berry describes how she accompanied Walpole on his visit to the printer of the Italian edition in Parma on 8 November 1790: '...At the printing-office [Bodoni's] they go on very slowly, but their work is excellent: they had just finished an impression of three hundred copies of the Castle of Otranto for Edwards the bookseller in London, and five copies upon vellum. With the director (Bodoni), who seems to be a clever man and fond of his art, I had a good deal of conversation in a bookseller's shop...' (ed. Lady Theresa Lewis, Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry, 1865). Walpole, however, was not happy with the printing, and wrote to her in December: '...I am glad you did not get a Parmesan Otranto. A copy is come so full of faults, that it is not fit to be sold here...' (A.T. Hazen, A Bibliography of Horace Walpole, 1948).

Provenance: Horace Walpole (1717-1797); Mary Berry (1763-1852); Lady Maria Theresa Lewis (née Villiers) (1803-1865); her son Sir Thomas Villiers Lister (1832-1902); thence by descent.

Lady Lewis' collection was initially formed through the amalgamation of two significant collections of letters: royal and political correspondence from that of her mother the Hon. Theresa Villiers (1775-1856), and that of her close friend, the writer Mary Berry (1763–1852). Mary Berry's bequest included correspondence from Horace Walpole, most notably his correspondence with Thomas Chatterton and David Hume, hitherto thought lost, and three poems dedicated to her. To this inheritance Lady Lewis subsequently added her own correspondence and collection of autographs gathered through her wide circle of social, political and literary connections entertained at her home, Kent House, St James's. Not seen outside the family until now, the collection is a remarkable survival and tells the story of a family at the heart of English society. An intricate web of connections and alliances is revealed, bringing together the worlds of royalty and politics, the arts and literature. It is also a story of influential women both as collectors and as correspondents: Theresa Villiers as keeper of royal secrets, Mary Berry and her circle of intellectuals, and, importantly, Lady Lewis as collector and salonnière bringing them all together in one extraordinary collection.