48. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole The first Gothic novel allegedly came to Walpole in a nightmare. That sort of surreal, look-over-your-shoulder feeling permeates this hundred-pager. It's set in the fictional kingdom of Otranto, where an ancient curse is about to overthrow the third-generation usurping ruler Manfred. Walpole writes in his second preface (in the first he claims to be merely the translator of some Crusade-era Italian), that he wished to make his characters "think, speak, and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions (8)." While the speech is the high-flown type that would be expected of a romance, I do think Walpole largely achieved this goal. While the coincidences and adventures are amazing, the characters seem like people I know. Manfred's submissive wife Hippolita behaves out of loving and motherly motivations, even though in a way modern women might decry. Their daughter Matilda is the shy, dreamy...
Life, Books, and SFF