The Lewis Walpole Library is a research center for eighteenth-century studies and an essential resource for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Its collections include important holdings of eighteenth-century British prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books, paintings, and decorative arts. Given to Yale by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (1895-1979) and Annie Burr Lewis (1902-1959), the Lewis Walpole Library is located in Farmington, Connecticut, in several eighteenth-century buildings on a fourteen-acre campus. The Lewis Walpole Library is a department of Yale University Library and open to researchers.
Welcome
At the library....
The Exhibition Gallery is now open. The current exhibit can be viewed every Wednesday from 2-4:30, no appointment needed.
Fall 2019 Exhibit Rescuing Horace Walpole: The Achievement of W.S. Lewis
Open September 20 through Januaru 24, 2020 at the Lewis Walpole Library
This fall’s exhibition, Rescuing Horace Walpole: The Achievement of W.S. Lewis, pays tribute to Lewis’s life and legacy as a scholar-collector, on the fortieth anniversary of his bequest of the Lewis Walpole Library to his alma mater, Yale University. Drawing heavily on the recently cataloged Lewis archives, the exhibition shows how the total dedication of the collector resulted in a collection of extraordinary range and depth, and expressed itself in some surprising ways. It also evolved into a monumental achievement of scholarship in the Yale-Walpole edition and, in the process, transformed perceptions of Walpole and his age.
Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Affair
Open September 9 through December 19, 2019 at the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, New Haven
Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Affair exhibition marks the bicentennial of the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings and focuses on the prolific media coverage around the trial. The trial is famous among cultural historians as a media event; in law it is remembered for Lord Brougham’s argument that a lawyer’s only duty is “to save that client by all means and expedients.”
The library is also sponosoring a mini-conference relating to the Queen Caroline exhibit. The Trial by Media Mini-Conference will be held on Friday, October 4 at the Yale Law School.
