The Castle of Otranto

The mother of all Gothic fiction. Conrad, a sickly heir to the house of Otranto, is tragically killed in mysterious circumstances on the day of his wedding. Manfred, his calculating father, decides to his son’s bride himself to save the dynasty. But an ancient curse placed on his ancestors begins to unfold. The Castle of Otranto was created by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, an antiquarian, writer, historian, and Whig (Liberal) politician, in the 1760s. Without this novel, there would be no Dracula or Udolpho.