HUGH WALPOLE'S GIFT.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19889, 28 March 1930, Page 20

HUGH WALPOLE'S GIFT.

SCOTT'S LETTER-BOOKS. £20,000 TREASURES. (r&Olt OTTB OWN COBBEBPONDENT.) LONDON, February 18. Mr Hugh Walpole, the novelist, has decided to leave the original letterbooks of Sir Walter Scott to the nation. This remarkable collection of unpublished letters, containing nearly COOO documents written to Scott by the most distinguished men and women of his time, will go to the Scottish National Library, Edinburgh. The announcement of the gift is made in 'Mr Walpole's preface to "The Private Letter-Booka of Sir Walter Scott," edited by Mr Wilfred Partington, editor of "The Bookman's Journal," which will shortly be published. This gift, which is the most interesting and important literary bequest Scotland has received for many years, recalls a romance of the sale roo The letter-books, thirty-two in number, are those in which Sir Walter Scotl bound all the most interesting letters he received over a period of uearly thirty years. They eluded *he eyes of Scott's biographers, and were kept at Abbotsford for many years until just after the war, when they found their way into a London sale room. 3, Mr Walpole, who is an ardent collec-

tor of Scott first editions and manuscripts, happened to be present, but had faint ho&es of securing such a prize, for it seemed certain that documents of such interest would go to an American millionaire. The bidding started at a remakably low figure, and Mr Walpole realised that, luckily for him, the American buyers were not present. He immediately stepped in and secured the Scott letter-books at a price probably twenty or thirty times below their present value, which is said to be about* £20,000.