Serendipity language was by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a (lost) painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip". The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". The name comes from "Serendip", an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence "Sarandib" by Arab traders. It is derived from the Sanskrit "Siṃhaladvīpaḥ" (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island).
Lewis Walpole Library Lewis Walpole Library The Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, possesses important collections of eighteenth-century British literary remains, including an unrivalled quantity of Horace Walpole's papers and effects from his estate at Strawberry Hill. The collections include eighteenth-century British books, manuscripts, prints, drawings and paintings, as well as important examples of the decorative arts. It was gathered by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (1895–1979, himself a graduate of Yale in 1918) and his wife Annie Burr Lewis (1902–1959) in a group of eighteenth-century buildings at Farmington. The Lewis Walpole Library was presented to Yale University, of whose Library it forms a department.