Horace Walpole, 1765 [but 1764]

[WALPOLE, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-1797).] The Castle of Otranto, a Story Translated by William Marshall, gent. from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto. London: Thomas Lownds, 1765 [but 1764].

Newton copy of the first edition of this mock tale of medieval horror. Inspired by a nightmare suffered at Walpole's Gothic Revival estate, Strawberry Hill, the novel purports to be a translation of a 16th-century Neapolitan manuscript by the fictional "Onuphrio Muralto." Its runaway success initiated the vogue for Gothic romances and furnished the machinery for a genre of fiction later transferred so successfully to cinema. The poet Thomas Gray told Walpole that it made "some of us cry a little." Hazen, Walpole 17; Rothschild 2491.

Octavo (169 x 107mm). (Some light spotting). Contemporary calf (joints split but holding); chemise and slipcase. Provenance: Thomas Philip, Earl de Gray (1781-1859; bookplate) – Alfred Edward Newton (1864-1940, American bibliophile; bookplate).