WALPOLE, Horace, Earl of Orford.

Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second. From the Original MSS.

London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1822.

First Edition. Two volumes, large quarto.

Binding: Handsome period half-green morocco over dark green sponge-marbled paper-covered boards, with matching green morocco corner tips. Some light rubbing to extremities. Spines divided into six compartments with five raised bands, elaborately tooled in gilt with intricate neoclassical arabesque and floral motifs. Red morocco lettering and numbering labels lettered in gilt (“Memoires of George the Second”, “Orford”, and volume numerals).

Edges & Endpapers: Matching comb-marbled text block edges and marbled endpapers.

Illustrations: Complete with finely engraved frontispiece after Bentley to Volume I, plus numerous engraved portrait vignettes set into decorative heraldic and neoclassical cartouches (including Archibald, Duke of Argyll; the Prince of Wales & Duke of Cumberland; and others). Pages are overall bright and clean with light foxing mostly isolated to pages near engravings.

Early contemporary ownership signature of Charles Knox in brown ink to the upper right corner of the title page and frontispiece leaf.

Edited and published posthumously by Lord Holland from Horace Walpole’s original manuscripts, this work provides one of the most vivid, detailed, and famously caustic insider accounts of mid-18th-century British court and parliamentary politics. Covering the closing decade (1751–1760) of George II's reign, Walpole offers sharp personal sketches, political intrigue, and parliamentary debate leading up to the accession of George III and the height of the Seven Years' War.