The Castle of Otranto, a gothic story.

Translated by William Marshall, Gent. from the original Italian of Onuphiro Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. A new edition, with plates. London : printed for E. Jeffery, 1797. Octavo, full speckled calf, ruled in gilt, spine in compartments ruled in gilt, contrasting gilt-lettered morocco title label, lightly rubbed, marbled endpapers (lower corner of front free endpaper and following two leaves with small loss), two preliminary blank leaves; pp. xvi; 152; (2 – blanks), six engraved plates with borders in red rule, internally clean, a very good copy.

The first gothic novel.

‘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 in the subtitle – A Gothic Story. Set in a haunted castle, the novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetic of the book has shaped modern-day Gothic romance/horror books, films, art, music, and the Goth subculture.

Walpole was inspired to write the story after a nightmare he had at his Gothic Revivalhome, Strawberry Hill House, in Twickenham, southwest London. Claiming he saw a ghost in the nightmare—which featured a “gigantic hand in armour”—Walpole incorporated imagery from this into the novel, and also drew on his knowledge of medieval history.

The novel 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’ – Wikipedia

Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717 –  1797) was an English writer, parliamentarian and aristocrat, notable for being the author of the first gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764). The youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, Horatio Walpole was also a prolific letter writer within elite English social circles.