Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole was an eighteenth-century English author, art historian and politician who wrote The Castle of Otranto in 1764, widely considered the first gothic novel. Available as an audiobook and book, the story of a cursed Italian castle launched an entire literary genre that would influence everything from the Brontës to modern horror. Walpole's pioneering blend of medieval romance, supernatural terror and dark imagination still captivates readers and listeners more than 250 years later.