Abstract

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity on January 28, 1754 in a letter to his distant cousin, close friend and lover, Horace Mann. Walpole, the youngest son of Britain’s first de facto prime minister, was a diplomat and a man of letters. Mann, unrelated to the American edu- cator with the same name, was a diplomat serving as British envoy to the court of Tuscany. The two men met and befriended in Florence during Walpole’s Grand Tour of Europe in 1739. Walpole returned to England a year later while Mann remained in Florence as Britain’s permanent envoy, a position he secured with assistance from Walpole’s father. The two men never met again but corresponded for 46 years, exchanging at least 1735 letters which provided a valuable firsthand account of 18th century British mores and manners.