Cover of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole Audiobook The Castle of Otranto
Audiobook · Urban Romantics

The Castle of Otranto

Author
Horace Walpole
Read by
Eloise Fairfax
Language
English
Length
3 hours 32 minutes
ISBN
9781802564006
Published
17 March 2025
Imprint
Urban Romantics
  • gothic
  • gothic novel
  • prophecy
  • relationship
  • family
  • marriage
  • British novel

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Description

On Conrad's wedding day a gigantic helmet falls and crushes him in the courtyard. Manfred, terrified for his line, would put aside Hippolita and take the bride Isabella himself. Isabella flees; Theodore and Matilda are drawn into a castle filling with Alfonso's spectre and armour too large for any living man. Usurpation meets prophecy as the house will not keep the wrong blood.

Author

Horace Walpole (1717–1797), son of Sir Robert Walpole, went to Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and built Strawberry Hill as a Gothic toy that became a style. The Castle of Otranto put a giant helmet on English fiction and invented a taste: vaults, lineage, a past that will not stay buried. Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third shows the same restless elegance on history. Wit, in a haunted corridor.

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