ABSTRACT
In August 1758 Horace Walpole filled a chest some 'five feet long, three wide and two deep, brim full' of papers he had discovered at his cousin Lord Hertford's seat at Ragley Hall. Walpole's assessment of the quantitative and qualitative significance of the materials at his disposal brings the responsibility of the editor - who is, in Walpole's case, at once alarmingly and reassuringly subjective - sharply into focus. LeFanu's article had commenced with a lament for the demise of the 'Craft of Authorship' and remarked upon the proliferation, in its wake, of variously self-important and mercenary writers of the tedious tale and 'specious romance' drawn from 'every class of the community'. LeFanu's scepticism about contemporary writing practices in general, and the march of the remembered in particular, relates to her own modest success as a novelist, and of that version of editing which is necessary to the writing of a life.
