A review by bluelilyblue
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Objectively not very good by today's standards and yet there's so much to admire in the novel that may have started the Gothic tradition. It's quite amazing how a genre so straightforward in its aesthetics and so simple in its devices keeps flourishing while breaking its own stereotypes--constantly changing yet so true to itself. I feel like it's hard to talk about Walpole and Otranto without also talking about everything that came after it, and that says it all about its influence--and about the generic consistency (not to be confused with triteness!) of Gothic fiction.

**Re-read for essay-writing purposes and I still find it fascinating that we most likely owe all haunted house stories to this silly little novel(la). 'They start up,' said the friar, 'who are suddenly beheld in the seat of lawful princes, but they wither away like the grass, and their place knows them no more.'