Included: The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole The History of Caliph Vathek - William Beckford The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe Caleb Williams - William Godwin Wieland: or, The Transformation - Charles Brockden Brown Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Melmoth the Wanderer (Lock and Key Version) - Charles Robert Maturin The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg St. John's Eve - Nikolai Gogol The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin Berenice - Edgar Allan Poe Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Nose - Nikolai Gogol The Minister's Black Veil - Nathaniel Hawthorne Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens Ligeia - E. A. Poe The Fall of the House of Usher - E. A. Poe The Masque of the Red Death - E. A. Poe The Oval Portrait - E. A. Poe The Pit and the Pendulum - E. A. Poe The Black Cat - E. A. Poe The Tell-Tale Heart - E. A. Poe Rappaccini's Daughter - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Double - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë Varney the Vampire - James Malcom Rymer Villette - Charlotte Brontë The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne Bleak House - Charles Dickens Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Uncle Silas - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson The Damned (Là-bas) - Joris-Karl Huysmans The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman Trilby - George du Maurier Dracula - Bram Stoker The Beetle - Richard Marsh The Turn of the Screw - Henry James The Real Thing - Henry James The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux The Lair of the White Worm - Bram Stoker The Outsider - Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Medievalism, terror, and the ubiquitous haunted castle are staples of the Gothic horror genre. But the man who unwittingly inspired the likes of ´Frankenstein´, ´Dracula´, Hammer horror movies and even the Goth subculture was blissfully unaware of his impact. Horace Walpole's ´The Castle of Otranto´ started a trend that has endured. The book features Manfred, lord of the castle, and includes sickness, weddings, doom-laden prophesies, a bizarre death, imprisonment, religion, a heroic peasant, and much more. There is a hint of ´Harry Potter´ and plenty to grip those who love shows like ´The Haunting of Hill House´ and ´Penny Dreadful´. Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was an English writer, historian, and politician - the son of Britain's first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Without knowing it, Walpole was thought by critics to have been the writer who paved the way for the Gothic tradition to burst onto the literary landscape. His Gothic novel ´The Castle of Otranto´, inspired many others and was followed by classics including Mary Shelley's ´Frankenstein´, Bram Stoker's ´Dracula´ and ´The Turn of the Screw´ by Henry James. Walpole also wrote countless campaigning letters on political and social themes.

Discover a new way to read classics with Quick Read. This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter. - Reading time of the complete text: about 3 hours - Reading time of the summarized text: 5 minutes The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole, published in 1764, and is generally regarded as the first gothic novel. The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. Walpole was inspired to write the story after a nightmare he had at his Gothic Revival home, Strawberry Hill House. The novel initiated a literary genre that would become extremely popular in the later 18th and early 19th century. The Castle of Otranto is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel, and is a singularly influential work of Gothic fiction. It blends elements of realist fiction with the supernatural and fantastical, establishing many of the plot devices and character types that would become typical of the Gothic novel. The novel tells the story of Manfred, lord of the castle, and his family. The violent question of bloodlines and succession serves as a key element in many of Shakespeare's plays, from Hamlet to Richard II and Macbeth, and it is clearly one of the major concerns of Otranto. Otranto is generally credited with creating the entire Gothic novel genre.

Surreal and satirical, these stories by the eighteenth century man of letters, Whig politician, art historian and antiquarian are '"...mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and for private amusement... an attempt to vary the stale and beaten class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are almost always devoid of imagination...." Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel, a genre appealing to a taste for terror and set in a remote past when prodigies and magic can be imagined to have existed, with violent contrasts between purity and ungoverned passions. The author represents the tale as having been translated from a black letter Italian volume of the 15th century but describing much earlier events. This fictional antiquity and the depiction of mysterious wonders, dark subterranean passages, fearsome apparitions, marvelous coincidences, and especially a savage threat to spotless innocence are all typical of this genre, which does not assure a reader of a happy ending.

The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally held to be the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century. Thus, Castle, and Walpole by extension is arguably the forerunner to such authors as Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, Daphne du Maurier, and Stephen King. (Summary by Wikipedia)

"Il castello e la signoria d'Otranto verranno a mancare all'attuale famiglia, quando l'autentico possessore diventerà troppo grande per abitarvi". Una profezia incombe su Manfredi, signore d'Otranto, ma la sua attenzione è rivolta altrove. Intende sposarsi con Isabella, una nobile fanciulla che cerca di scappare da questo matrimonio forzato con tutte le sue forze. Ed è così che in suo aiuto accorrerà la profezia: come Manfredi presto scoprirà, sottrarsi al proprio destino è difficile anche per i signori di un castello. Tra eventi soprannaturali, fantasmi millenari, intrighi di castello e giochi di potere, "Il Castello di Otranto" - considerato il primo romanzo gotico della storia - è una lettura obbligatoria per ogni amante del genere. Horace Walpole (1717-1797) è stato uno scrittore inglese. Autore molto prolifico, in vita riscosse un buon successo editoriale grazie anche al suo fortunato epistolario. "Il castello di Otranto", la sua opera forse più famosa, è considerato il primo romanzo gotico della storia.