Publisher's Synopsis
Walpole, as the biographer of the life of John Cornelius, wrote a long, first person narrative of the life of a genius who could never bring his world of dreams in tune with the world of reality for himself or for those who read his books, a writer who strove desperately to produce serious novels, and who died famous and acknoledged for three slim volumes of fairy tales. Walpole wrote remantically of a character whose life was never very real, and who could not find happiness, except at odd moments because of this gulf between him and the world. Walpole's romantic flights have realistic intermission to temper them.His mother was the daughter of William Baring, proprietor of the White Horse Inn at Caerlyn Sands. Baring, from all I ever heard, must have been a grand, boasting, foolish character, famous locally and known even in distant parts of Glebeshire.I have seen a brown faded daguerreotype of himself and his wife, she a small mean-faced woman with a tight mouth and with a locket almost as large as her face hanging on her meagre bosom. He greatly took my eye, big as an ox and dressed, for the occasion of the photograph, in awkward Sunday clothes, but his eyes were open and frank, his mouth strong and smiling. He carried in his hand one of those old top-hats with a broad and curling brim. Across his great spreading waistcoat was a vast gold watch-chain and against his trouser a fine swaggering fob.
