The publication of this four-volume edition of Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George III completes the monumental Yale Walpole Edition that also includes 48 volumes of correspondence and three volumes of Memoirs of King George II.

Walpole's aim in Memoirs of the Reign of King George III was not to chronicle events year by year (October 1760 - February 1772), as he had done in Memoirs of King George II, but to defend what he called his "return to action" and to attack those who had thwarted it. Yet previous editors, first Sir Denis le Marchant in 1845 and then G. F. Russell Barker in 1894, abridged or altered much of what Walpole said about his friends and his enemies, and left out most of his lies and fantasies about the British Royal Family. These editors produced a narrative that seemed impersonal as well as impartial, the work of a detached spectator rather than a committed participant. The present edition is the first to go back to the manuscripts and give Walpole's text in its entirety, unabridged and unexpurgated, together with an introduction and annotation designed to help reassess the value of the memoirs as historical evidence.

Widely acclaimed when first published, this lively social history of Hogarth's England went into a second edition with a new preface and updated notes and guide to further reading. 'This panorama of eighteenth-century English life ...Methodists and melancholia, village cricketers versified to glory and homosexuals pilloried to death, he has an eye and a word for everything in the pullulating scene.' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Social history is ever flourishing, but the number of really original contributions is relatively small. Mr. Jarrett's book is one of this number; he is an historian of established reputation in general history who sets out to describe the eighteenth-century scene from his own examination of original sources.' ECONOMIST 'Jarrett's comprehensive learning, his graceful style, and his instinct for the telling detail make this an excellent book to dip into, to read in installments and to keep for reference.'NEW YORKER 'Jarrett digs deep into the diaries, letters, memoirs of the period, gives anecdote and incident as a counterpoint to the illustrations, examines the age's attitude toward children and education, the role of women, marriage, pleasures, politics, life and death ...A brilliant study.' LOS ANGELES TIMES