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
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
Portrait of Horace Walpole by Joshua Reynolds, 1756
Ann Radcliffe
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Ann Radcliffe was an English novelist and poet who pioneered the Gothic novel. Her fourth and most popular novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, was published in 1794. She is also remembered for her third
The Castle of Otranto
…initiated a literary genre that would become extremely popular in the later 18th and throughout the 19th century, with authors such as Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford, Matthew Lewis, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and George du Maurier. The Castle of Otranto…
Wedgwood & Bentley vase. Radcliffe's father sold their wares in Bath, Somerset.
Salvator Rosa's "Bandits on a Rocky Coast", painted between 1655 and 1660. Rosa's landscapes influenced Radcliffe's novels.
Claude Lorrain's "Landscape with a Piping Shepherd", painted between 1629 and 1632. Lorrain was also a visual influence on Radcliffe's novels.
Imagined portrait of Ann Radcliffe, published after her death in J.S. Pratt's 1853 edition of The Romance of the Forest