Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. First Gothic novel ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
In this intriguing book, Morris Brownell offers a fresh account of thecareer and influence of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), the great English man of letters andart historian. Rejecting both the traditional view of Walpole as a trifling collector ofcuriosities and the more recent assessment of him as a sober social historian andconnoisseur, Brownell argues that Walpole grew to become a serious patron, collector,and historian of the arts—the Prime Minister of Taste.

Drawing on vast Walpole archival materials and on his astonishing forty volumes ofletters, Brownell describes the formation of young Walpole's taste and interest in thevisual arts. Brownell argues that England's leading portrait engraver, George Vertue,converted Walpole from Grand Tour taste in painting to a life-long study of Englishportraits. The book discusses the significance of Walpole's collection of Englishhistorical portraits and French portraits of the ancien régime, and it analyzes Walpole'sfascination with portraiture, comparing the painted portraits Walpole collected and wroteabout to the literary portraits he penned in his letters. Walpole's passion for the art ofportraiture was not the trifling pastime he pretended, Brownell says; in fact it was thesource of his greatest literary achievement—a gallery of literary portraits of the Englisharistocracy as fine as the painted portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Very Narrow Biography
I bought the book thinking it a biography of Horace Walpole.A biography it is, but in a very narrow sense.It almost exclusively deals with Walpole's acquisition of art and the pieces themselves.I saw no discussion of his terms as MP. Also, nothing about his authorship of 'The Castle of Otranto' or the memoirs of George II and George III all of which are still in print today.Very little about his friends outside of art collecting.If your looking to find out about this specific portion of Walpole's life then the book is well written and thorough with many photographs of the pictures in his collection.A general biography it is not.

Brownell Pleases the Palate with Prime Minister of Taste
This biography of Walpole is written by the foremost expert on Horace Walpole, Professor Morris Brownell.

There are interesting anecdotes, witty analogies and rare photographs and illustrations of the English commentator, Horace Walpole and his life and times.

This book is a must-have for anybody interested in English history, literature and monarchy, ... Read more