Publisher's Synopsis
This is an edition of the correspondence from the Marquise du Deffand to George Augustus Selwyn, celebrated wit and minor politician of the 18th century. Selwyn, like his life-long friend Horace Walpole, destroyed or had destroyed his side of the correspondence, but the Marquise's letters survive, providing an interesting insight into the social history of the times. Thirty-two of these letters are published for the first time in this volume. The text includes a preface outlining the textual apparatus, an introduction, and an appendix containing 25 previously unpublished letters to Selwyn from other French correspondents.
