• Thomas Patch, The Golden Asses

Welcome

As of May 15, 2023 Special Collections units at Yale University are open to Yale-affiliated faculty, students, and staff and to non-Yale researchers who comply with the Yale Covid Visitor’s Policy.

The Lewis Walpole Library does not require a reservation, but we appreciate being informed in advance of any planned research visit since space in the Reading Room is limited. 


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.


At the library....

Fellowship Applications Invited for 2024-25
 
Applications are invited for the 2024-25 Fellowship year which runs from June 1, 2024 through May 31, 2025.
 
  • the round-trip cost of travel between the Lewis Walpole Library and the recipient’s home institution or residence
  • reimbursement of the cost of a rental car or local travel expenses
  • accommodation for four weeks (fellowships) or two weeks (travel grants) in an eighteenth-century house on the Library’s campus
  • a per diem living allowance to cover living expenses for four-week Fellows and two-week Travel Grant Recipients
 Application deadline is Monday, January 8, 2024
 
 l is an interior of a wood-paneled library with a woman speaking with an electronic screen behind her; center is a view of the reading room with large table with three researchers seated looking at library materials; r shows a terrace with tables at which adults sit in conversation in front of a white clapboard house
 
The library offers a variety of fellowships and travel grants to support research focused in the library’s rich collections of eighteenth-century materials.
 
Residential Visiting Fellowships bring scholars from across the globe to Farmington for two or four weeks to undertake research in library collections on a wide variety of topics related to Britain in the eighteenth-century world. 
 
Summer Fellowships for Yale Graduate Students afford students whose topic of research is supported by the library’s collections the opportunity to spend two, four, or eight weeks during June through August in residence at the library.
 

The Charles A. Ryskamp Travel Grant is awarded on a competitive basis to a Yale College senior whose senior essay project would benefit from extended use of the Lewis Walpole Library’s collections. The grant provides funds for regular travel during the academic year to Farmington and more.

 

News

16 men are seated at an oval table in Windsor arm-chairs smoking long-stemmed tobacco pipes, drinking from glasses and tankards, and engaging in conversation. On the far right a female servant brings in fresh tobacco pipes and a bottle and the walls include various prints and pictures  including landscapes, 'three witches addressing Macbeth', and satires
November 2, 2023
Asking Is it any good? this exhibition, on view through 28 June 2024, presents a selection of prints, drawings, and paintings from the library’s collection to explore...
Mezzotint half-length portrait of a man facing quarter turn to the right with his head turned to the left, looking over his shoulder. He wears a doublet with slashed sleeves and a lace-trimmed collar.
November 2, 2023
Now on the Scholar’s Progress Blog: “Horace Walpole and a Case of Antiquarian Eccentricity” by Stephen Clarke, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Liverpool,...
October 10, 2023
Barbara Mundy, Donald and Martha Robertson Chair in Latin American Art History, Tulane University, undertakes some armchair detective work in researching this “deeply...