The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
✓

or to save your progress

The Castle of Otranto: Genre 1 key example

Key Examples in The Castle of Otranto

Genre
Explanation and Analysis—Genre:

The Castle of Otranto certainly feels like an unusual book nowadays, but it would also have seemed that way to readers in the time in which Horace Walpole was writing. This is because it's generally regarded as the first novel ever written in the Gothic genre. Walpole was trying to create something entirely new while still using stylistic and thematic elements drawn from contemporary realism and medieval romance. When the second edition of the book came out, Walpole even added a subtitle to reflect this experiment: it was published as The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story.