The Castle of Otranto is a book by Horace Walpole first published in 1764 and 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". The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture

After the death of his only son on his wedding day, Manfred, the Prince of Otranto, determines to marry the bride-to-be, setting himself on a course of destruction.

A room-by-room tour of one of the wonders of the eighteenth-century architectural world

"Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters" by Horace Walpole. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

The Gothic novel, which flourished from about 1765 until 1825, revels in the horrible and the supernatural, in suspense and exotic settings. This volume, with its erudite introduction by Mario Praz, presents three of the most celebrated Gothic novels: The Castle of Otranto, published pseudonymously in 1765, is one of the first of the genre and the most truly Gothic of the three. Vathek (1786), an oriental tale by an eccentric millionaire, exotically combines Gothic romanticism with the vivacity of The Arabian Nights and is a narrative tour de force. The story of Frankenstein (1818) and the monster he created is as spine-chilling today as it ever was; as in all Gothic novels, horror is the keynote.

The tragic death of Walpole's cat and the Thomas Gray poem written in her honor: the true story of what happened, and a look at the lively social and cultural scene in the eighteenth century. This delightful compendium focuses on one of the best-loved poems in the English language, but in the process it takes the reader on an engaging romp through the literary, intellectual, and cultural world of the eighteenth century. It brings alive a host of engaging characters: Horace Walpole himself (one of the great letter writers of all time, wit, raconteur; the curmudgeonly Dr. Johnson (who nevertheless had “a very fine cat indeed”) and his sometimes recalcitrant biographer James Boswell; and a cast of “handsome cats,” including Selima and Zama. In February 1747, Selima the tabby fell into a Chinese blue and white porcelain tub in Walpole’s house in London’s Mayfair and never returned to dry land. The poem by Thomas Gray, “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold-fishes,” was written as her mock epitaph. Here is the true history of the event, and a look at the sparkling social and cultural life of the period. It is beautifully illustrated with Richard Bentley’s original series of designs for the poem, William Blake’s wonderful watercolors of some fifty years later, and the unpublished color illustrations produced in the 1940s by the noted children’s book illustrator Kathleen Hale, of Orlando the Marmalade Cat fame.