Horace Walpole (1717-1797), as the youngest son of the powerful Whig minister Robert Walpole, grew up at the center of Georgian society and politics and circulated amongst the elite literary, aesthetic, and intellectual circles of his day. His brilliant letters and writings have made him the best-known commentator on the rich cultural life of 18th-century England. In his own day, he was most famous for his extraordinary collections of rare books and manuscripts, antiquities, paintings, prints and drawings, furniture, ceramics, arms and armor, and curiosities, all displayed at his pioneering Gothic Revival house at Strawberry Hill, on the banks of the Thames at Twickenham.

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