• 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.  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. 

Yale University Library special collections reading rooms are open to non-Yale researchers who comply with the Yale Covid Visitor’s Policy. Under current Yale Health and Safety Guidelines, masking is optional for vaccinated and boosted staff and visitors. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about the policy or about your visit. 


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....

Mary Berry’s Fashionable Friends
 
Friday, May 12 at 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm
Saturday, May 13 at 2:00 pm
 
An entirely new version of the comedy 
Directed and abridged by Laura Engel, Duquesne University
 
Featuring: 
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER
SADIE CROW
AMY DICK
ERIC LESLIE
 
Location:
The Lewis Walpole Library
154 Main Street

Farmington, CT 06032

The Play:

In 1801 Anne Damer, Mary Berry, and Agnes Berry embarked on a remarkable collaboration staging a performance of Berry’s comedy Fashionable Friends as an amateur theatrical production at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Damer and Berry starred in the play as the titular fashionable friends; Damer played the seductive and sly Lady Selina and Berry the sentimental and clever Mrs. Lovell.

Seating is limited and advance registration is required. Register here

News

May 2, 2023
The  Library is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2023-2024 Fellowship and Travel Grant awards. To see the list of receipients, visit our Fellowship Awards page.
a short-statured figure with knees together, one hand raised in an oratorial gesture, the other holding a bag over his shoulder stands on a three-legged stool addressing an older man in a wig who leans down over a sign, a group of men sit on the left.
May 2, 2023
In this entry for the Scholars’ Progress blog, Miriam Wallace recounts her experience researching “ ‘speaking subjects’—that is, considering how the visual record...
February 13, 2023
Postponed: Date tba - 10:30 am - 3:00 pm The Lewis Walpole Library is pleased to host a collections-based seminar for graduate students around the exhibition Knight Errant of...