His first published book, called Aedes Walpolianae (1743) catalogued his father’s painting collection. Most of Walpole’s other works are equally obscure to modern readers. But it has never been edited or anthologized for the general reader, and has therefore been read mostly by specialists in the field. His correspondence alone comes to forty eight modern printed volumes ( ) and is a tremendous resource for learning about his life and the high society in which he traveled. In his own lifetime, Walpole was well known as a writer of smart, witty, gossipy, and incisive letters. But he is probably less well known than many other eighteenth-century British writers because the work he did was often in forms that do not fit well into the usual categories of texts that get taught and read now. He had his own printing press at his amazing home, called Strawberry Hill (about which more in a moment), which published some of his own writings, and he saw himself as an important contributor to the literary and artistic culture of his day. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents.Horace Walpole (1717-1797) is one of the most interesting literary figures of the eighteenth century in Britain. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers.

The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride–to–be. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. ‘Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions’ The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction.

The castle of horace walpole