SOURCE: "The Beginnings of Gothic Romance" in The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance, Constable 4 Co., 1921.

In this excerpt, Birkhead enumerates the qualities of The Castle of Otranto that appealed to the popular taste of Walpole's contemporaries and briefly describes its legacy for later romances.

To Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto was published on Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having introduced the Gothic romance and of having made it fashionable. Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age devoted to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval tale disguised as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio Muralto," by William Marshall. It was only after it had been received with enthusiasm that he confessed the authorship. As he explained frankly in a letter to his friend Mason: "It is not everybody that may in...