The pen was ever in Horace Walpole's hands, and his entire compositions would fill many volumes. His Castle of Otranto (1764) is the prototype of the romantic novel. The Mysterious Mother (1768) is the least bad of tragedies when tragedy was at its worst.
The antiquarian works merit praise. The volume of Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (176o), one of the earliest attempts to rehabilitate a character previously stamped with infamy, showed acuteness and research. A work of more lasting reputation, which has retained its vitality for more than a century, is entitled Anecdotes of Painting in England, (4 vols., 1762-1771). It was re-edited with additions by the Rev. James Dallaway in five volumes (1826-1828), and then again was revised and edited by R. N. Wornum in 1849. A cognate volume, also based on the materials of Vertue, is entitled the Catalogue of Engravers Born and Resident in England (1763), also often reprinted. As a senator himself, or as a private person following at a distance the combats of St. Stephen's, Walpole recorded in a diary the chief incidents in English politics. If he was sometimes prejudiced, he rarely distorted the acts of those whom he disliked ; and his prejudices, which lie on the surface, were mainly against those whom he considered traitors to his father. These diaries extend from 175o to 1783, and cover a period of momentous importance. The Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II. was edited by Lord Holland (1846) ; its successor, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III., was edited by Sir Denis Le Marchant (4 vols., and re edited in 1894 by G. F. Russell Barker; the last volumes of the series, Journal of the Reign of George III. from 1771 to 1783, were edited and illustrated by John Doran (2 vols., 1859), and were edited with an introduction by A. F. Steuart (London, 1909).
To these works should be added the Reminiscences (2 vols., 1819), which Walpole wrote in 1788 for the Misses Berry. But Walpole was above all a letter-writer. His correspondents were numerous and widespread, but the chief of them were William Cole (1714-1782), the clerical antiquary of Milton; Robert Jephson, the dramatist ; William Mason, the poet ; Lord Hertford during his embassy in Paris; the countess of Ossory ; Lord Har court ; George Montagu, his friend at Eton ; Henry Seymour Conway (1721-1795) and Sir Horace Mann. The Letters were published at different dates, but the standard collection is that by Mrs. Paget Toynbee (19o3-1905), and to it should be added the volumes of the letters addressed to Walpole by his old friend Madame du Deffand (4 vols., 181o). A selection has been edited by W. S. Lewis (New York and London, 1926). Walpole has been called "the best letter-writer in the English language." His political estimates are more acute than his literary ones.
Abundant information about Horace Walpole will be found in the Memoirs of him and of his contemporaries edited by Eliot Warburton (1851), J. H. Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries (4 vols., 5843-44) and the extracts from the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry (3 vols., 1866) ; also Horace Walpole and his World, by L. B. Seeley (1884) and Austin Dobson, Horace Walpole (I89o). It would be unpardonable to omit mention of Macaulay's sketch of Walpole's life and character. See also P. Yvon, Horace Walpole, 1717 97. Essai de biographie psychologique et litteraire (1924), and Horace Walpole as Poet (Paris, 1924) ; H. B. Wheatley in Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. so (1913) ; D. M. Stuart, Horace Walpole in English Men of Letters (1927).