The earliest and most influential of the Gothic novels.
First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the second , ‘to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern’. He gives us a series of catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of identity, and exciting contests. Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole’s own favourite among his numerous works. His friend, the poet Thomas Gray, wrote he and his family, having read Otranto, were now ‘afraid to go to bed o’nights’
