Hugh Walpole: 71 books

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America.

The book begins: There was a certain window between the kitchen and the pantry that was Hamlet's favorite. Thirty years ago-these chronicles are of the year 1894-the basements of houses in provincial English towns, even of large houses owned by rich people, were dark, chill, odorful caverns hissing...

In the first place, this is very good reading, holds the interest from first to last, and has that sense of impending horror that is characteristic of certain of Walpole's novels (The Man With The Red Hair, etc.). If Rebecca had not caught the imagination of the public, The Sea Tower, might have struck...

This 1922 novel puts to good use Walpole’s experiences in a series of boarding schools, as well as his knowledge of his father’s career as the Bishop of Edinburgh. Acknowledged as one of his best books, it is ranked with the clerical classics of Anthony Trollope. Walpole adapted it for the stage in 1936.

“Hugh Seymour” is the protagonist among a slew of characters appearing in this partly autobiographical 1915 collection of sketches. Meet Enery, Bim Rochester, Young John Scarlet, and other children living around a quiet old square in London. Hugh lives as a paying guest in various houses, noticing...

This 1921 novel, praised for Walpole’s distinctively vivid characters and London setting, was greeted as a departure for the popular writer: part satire, part fairy-tale. Young Henry Trenchard and his sister Millicent are ready to confront a world torn by rapid change and defined by conflicts with an older generation, represented by Sir Charles Duncombe.

Sounding a favorite theme—the power of the elderly, especially the power of elderly ladies—this early (1917) novel shows the influence of the author’s mentor, Henry James. It encapsulates Walpole’s gift for lighting on the small, telling detail and also his surprising humor. Second in the Rising City sequence, after The Duchess of Wrexe.

Praised in a letter to the author by Carl Jung as “a psychological masterpiece,” Walpole’s early (1912) novel is the story of a Cambridge undergraduate, Olva Dune, who commits a murder. Ironically, at the moment he commits his crime, he feels the presence of God.

In addition to his autobiographical novels of social observation, Walpole was also known for his fine tales of supernatural horror. This 1920 collection includes “Lizzie Rand,” one of his most successful excursions into the unknown, as well as “Absalom Jay,” “Mr. Nix,” “Nobody,” “Lucy Moon,” and “Bombastes Furioso.”

During World War I, Walpole worked in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) as Head of British Propaganda. He drew on that experience for this 1919 novel, the tale of a Russian family caught up in the political intrigue of the Revolution. The book was the first winner of the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

A father returns from a lonely twenty years’ exile in Australia, to find his only son cold and unwelcoming.  Walpole’s first novel (1909) was praised for its fine observation of the small moments of ordinary lives, and for its depiction of Cornwall’s brooding seaside.

The author was praised for his lively and accurate depictions of childhood in this 1919 novel. A comic exploration of the psychology of boyhood, it is the first in a trilogy that includes Jeremy and Hamlet (1923) and Jeremy at Crale (1927). The fictional setting, the cathedral town of Polchester in Glebeshire, appears in many later Walpole novels.

A case of buyer’s remorse, Victorian style: feisty young Rachel chooses a conventional but dull suitor over her rebellious cousin. As her marriage goes into decline, she starts seeing a lot more of the unsuitable man. This 1914 novel shows the influence of Walpole’s mentor, Henry James.

While working for the Red Cross during World War I, Walpole rescued a wounded soldier under fire. He drew on his experiences for this 1916 novel featuring a love triangle between a nurse, a weak English physician, and a brutal Russian doctor. Critics praised the book for showing the Russian view of the war.