Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

The son of the Prime Minister Sir Robert, Walpole was born in London and educated at Eton
and Cambridge. He was for a short time an MP (Member of Parliament). However, his real
vocations were the arts (including literature) and the pursuit of a pleasurable life as a
gentleman. Walpole travelled widely in Europe, and his letters from abroad are typical of the
period in showing a new appreciation of wild, natural beauty; they also reveal the author as a
humorous, lively writer. Walpole was one of the main promoters of Gothic taste in the arts: his
Castle of Otranto (1764) was the first Gothic novel to appear and influenced English literature
deeply. It is a story of mystery and suspense set in medieval Italy. The Gothic mansion that
Walpole built at Strawberry Hill, near London, where he lived from 1747 onwards, was very
influential on English architectural taste. He called it his ‘little Gothic castle’ and, in its
extravagance, it set the style for many similar country houses.

The story of The Castle of Otranto is set in 13th -century Italy. Manfred, the Prince of Otranto,
is a tyrant who has murdered the legitimate prince, Alfonso. A prophecy by St Nicholas says
that Manfred’s descendants will continue to reign as long as a male heir of his lives in the
castle, and the castle is not too small for its legitimate owner. Both elements, the second in
particular, do not seem to be cause for concern, but at the beginning of the novel Manfred’s
only son Conrad is crushed to death by a mysterious gigantic helmet, just before he could
marry the young and beautiful Isabella. Manfred decides to divorce his own wife Hippolita and
marry Isabella, to procure himself another male heir. After a complicated series of adventures
involving apparitions of ghosts, escapes, and violent deaths (without his knowing it, Manfred at
night kills his own daughter Matilda), Alfonso’s ghost finally swells to gigantic proportions and
breaks down the castle’s walls. The prophecy has come true, and Manfred, terrified of divine
wrath, confesses to being a usurper. He and his wife retire to a monastery, while the
legitimate heir, Theodore, marries Isabella and reigns over Otranto.

Most of the features that will be later characteristic of horror and crime stories – flight through
the castle’s cellars and vaults, dark passages, steep stone staircases, among creaking doors –
are already present in The Castle of Otranto, where mystery and suspense are heightened by
the darkness of the scenes.