Haggerty (Univ. of California, Riverside) seeks to show that Walpole's letters (which run to 48 volumes in the Yale edition, 1937-83) constitute "one of the great literary accomplishments of the [18th] century, at least on a par with Boswell's Life of Johnson and Gibbon's Decline and Fall," and in the process to explore that era's constructions of masculinity. The first ... Read moreeffort does not succeed (this is a critic for whom Walpole's wooden play The Mysterious Mother is a "literary masterpiece"); the second bears more fruit, though little here is new. Much of this brief book comprises quotations from the letters, followed by paraphrase or summary, even when their import is quite clear. Haggerty's commentary can be banal ("I think we can all be pleased that this great correspondence ends on a high note"; "his life is a performance in which he is the major player"; Eton was an "already famous school" when Walpole attended). Haggerty writes clearly, and it is pleasant to revisit Walpole's thoughts on friendship and collecting, but this is a curiously empty book that only specialists will find themselves consulting. CHOICE Show Less