Castle of Otranto [Christmas Summary Classics]

Christmas Summary Classics
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HORACE WALPOLE
Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole, the third son of Sir Robert Walpole, was born in 1717. After finishing his education at Eton and Cambridge, he travelled abroad for some years, principally in Italy, where he seems to have acquired those tastes for which he afterwards became so well known. He returned to England in 1741, and took his seat in parliament, but he had no taste for politics, and six years later he purchased a piece of ground near Twickenham, and made the principal occupation of his life the erection and decoration of his famous mansion--"Strawberry. Hill." "The Castle of Otranto" appeared in 1764. It was described as a "Gothic Story translated by William Marshal Gent, from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto." But, emboldened by the success of the work, Walpole in the second edition acknowledged that he himself was the author. The theme of the story was suggested to him by a dream, of which he said, "All I could recover was that I thought myself in an ancient castle, and that on the uppermost baluster of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write without knowing in the least what I intended to relate." The tale was the precursor of a whole series of Gothic romances, and for fifty years afterwards English readers were afforded an unfailing supply of the supernatural and the horrible. A more important if less direct achievement of Walpole's was that by "The Castle of Otranto" he heralded the romantic revival that culminated in the masterpieces of Scott. Walpole died on March 2, 1797.