Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill
January 21, 2012 4:07 PM   Subscribe

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection provides visitors with the opportunity to view a virtual reconstruction of Walpole's extensive collections--everything from armor to wall hangings--housed in his custom-built Gothic villa, Strawberry Hill. (For video tours and discussions of its ornamentation, ongoing restoration &c., check out the Strawberry Hill Youtube Channel.) Objects can be viewed according to maker, type, or room; there's also a virtual tour, based on contemporary paintings and sketches. For more about Walpole, plus links to e-texts of his fiction (most famously, the pioneering Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto), visit The Literary Gothic.
posted by thomas j wise (5 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for this. I look forward to delving properly a bit later.
posted by peacay at 4:23 PM on January 21, 2012


Does he serve wine?
posted by timsteil at 4:41 PM on January 21, 2012


I like the Charles I ring... with a hinged cover over the portrait so no one can see it. And the motto engraved on it: Prepared be to follow me. That's hardcore.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:00 AM on January 22, 2012


Really fascinating collection. I've been to Strawberry hill and, while the refurbishment is very much a work in progress, I found it interesting that the guided tour of the house was written by Walpole himself..

I knew that among all the other crazy things Walpole had in his collection, there was the magic mirror of John Dee. I've seen it at the British museum. Quite another thing to see the small bedroom where Walpole kept it.
posted by vacapinta at 8:25 AM on January 22, 2012


Walpole is a fascinating figure who basically invented both the gothic novel and interior design. It seems to me that The Castle of Otranto is deliberately funny as well as amazingly psychosexual thus anticipating Philip Brophy, as well as Dr Freud.
posted by tigrefacile at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2012


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