W. S. (Wilmarth Sheldon) Lewis

Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (1895–1979), often known as W. S. Lewis or “Lefty” Lewis, was an American scholar, writer, editor, and collector with a lifelong fascination for the eighteenth-century author Horace Walpole. Yale sources describe him as the guiding force behind the great modern revival of interest in Walpole and his world.

With his wife, Annie Burr Lewis, he spent years assembling books, manuscripts, prints, paintings, and decorative arts connected to Walpole, his circle, and eighteenth-century Britain. At their home in Farmington, Connecticut, they created the collection that became the Lewis Walpole Library, later given to Yale University.

Lewis also devoted nearly half a century to editing The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, a major scholarly project that secured his reputation. Alongside that editorial work, he wrote books of his own, including Collector's Progress and Horace Walpole, blending scholarship with the enthusiasm of someone who truly loved his subject.