Horace Walpole
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Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, better known as Horace Walpole, was a British Whig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian.
Portrait of Horace Walpole by Joshua Reynolds, 1756
Walpole by Rosalba Carriera, c. 1741.
Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham
Horace Walpole by John Giles Eccardt, c. 1755.
The Castle of Otranto
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The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. First published in 1764, it is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel i
Horace Walpole
…southwest London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. They have been published by Yale University Press in 48 volumes. In…
Title page from the second edition
The novel was inspired by a nightmare Walpole had at Strawberry Hill House (18th-century engraving of the Gothic villa pictured).
Illustration from a 1794 German edition