ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was an English writer and politician, who is mainly known for his short novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) which is considered the first example of the genre of the Gothic novel.

Detailed explanation-2: -Generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto was first published in 1764. Its author is Horace Walpole (1717–1797), but it purports to be a translation of a work printed in Naples in 1529 and newly discovered in the library of ‘an ancient Catholic family in the north of England’.

Detailed explanation-3: -Gothic fiction as a genre was first established with the publication of Horace Walpole’s dark, foreboding The Castle of Otranto in 1764. In the centuries since, gothic fiction has not only flourished, but also branched off into many popular subgenres.

Detailed explanation-4: -The classic horror stories Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are in the Gothic tradition but introduce the existential nature of humankind as its definitive mystery and terror.