The Castle of Otranto
Subtitle: a gothic story
By: Horace Walpole ; edited by W.S. Lewis ; with a new introduction and notes by E.J. Clery.
Contributors: Lewis, W. S. 1895-1979.
Series: The world's classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 125
Subjects: Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
Description: 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 edition, '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 that he and his family, having read Otranto, were now 'afraid to go to bed o' nights'.

. The novel is here reprinted from the text of 1798, the last that Walpole himself prepared for press.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes facsim. of original t.p.