# The Castle of Otranto (1764)

> The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, first published 24 Dec 1764: publication record, synopsis, a verified quotation and sources.

Canonical page: https://lineageofshadows.com/works/castle-of-otranto/

Title: The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto
Author: Horace Walpole
Attribution: First edition pseudonymous: presented as a translation by 'William Marshal, Gent.' of a work by 'Onuphrio Muralto'; both names are invented. Walpole acknowledged authorship in the second edition, whose title adds the subtitle 'A Gothic Story'.
Form: Novel
First appearance: 24 Dec 1764 (timeline year 1764)
Themes: The supernatural, Inheritance, The house

## Publication record

- Volume, 24 Dec 1764: London (1 vol.). First edition, issued on Christmas Eve 1764 though the title page is dated 1765. Anonymous, presented as an Italian text printed at Naples in 1529. [1, 2, 3]
- Revised edition, 1765: London (1 vol.). Second edition, issued about six months after the first; Walpole acknowledges authorship and adds the subtitle 'A Gothic Story'. Imprint and exact month are not established by an authoritative source. [1, 2]

## Synopsis

On the day of his wedding, Conrad, the frail heir of Manfred, Prince of Otranto, is crushed in the castle courtyard by a gigantic helmet that has fallen from nowhere. Manfred, haunted by an old prophecy that his family will lose Otranto, resolves to put aside his wife Hippolita and marry Conrad's bride, the young Isabella, himself. She escapes through the vaults beneath the castle. In the days that follow, a portrait steps out of its frame, a statue bleeds, and a peasant named Theodore troubles the household with a face it seems to know. Walpole sets a medieval Italian court against the claims of lineage and succession, and makes the stones themselves protest.

## Setting

Between the First Crusade (1095) and the last Crusade (1243), as the first Preface reckons it. Places: Otranto; the castle of Otranto [3]

## From the text

> he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.

Chapter I. Project Gutenberg ebook #696: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/696 (Gutenberg's text of the novel (carries the 'Preface to the First Edition'); line breaks joined)

## Facts

- The first edition was issued on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1764, although its title page is dated 1765. It appeared without Walpole's name, and he acknowledged authorship in the second edition about six months later. [1, 2]
- The first Preface invents a pedigree: the story is said to have been printed in black letter at Naples in 1529 and found in the library of an old Catholic family in the north of England, and the title page credits a translator, 'William Marshal, Gent.', who did not exist. [3, 1]
- Walpole traced the story to a dream in which he thought himself in an ancient castle and saw a gigantic hand in armour on the uppermost banister of a great staircase; he began writing that evening and, according to the edition's biographical introduction, finished it in two months. [3]
- The second edition was the first to carry the subtitle 'A Gothic Story', so the word 'Gothic' was applied to the novel by Walpole himself. [2, 1]

## Threads out

- Its tradition continues in: [The Mysteries of Udolpho](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/mysteries-of-udolpho/). The Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Lewis calls Radcliffe's romances a form of literature of which Walpole's Castle of Otranto 'set the first example'; a genre-level link, not a documented borrowing. [4]

## Notes on dates and attribution

- Date: the title page is dated 1765 but the book was issued on 24 December 1764 (Soane Museum, CSUN). The timeline anchors on 1764, the year of first public appearance.
- Second-edition month: the Soane record says 'six months later'; no authoritative source names the month, so only 1765 is shown.

## Sources

1. The Castle of Otranto, a story ... The fifth edition (1786), catalogue record with publication history. Sir John Soane's Museum. https://collections.soane.org/b10405 (accessed 2026-10-09)
2. The Castle of Otranto (Peek in the Stacks). California State University Northridge, Special Collections & Archives. https://library.csun.edu/sca/peek-stacks/castle-otranto (accessed 2026-10-09)
3. The Castle of Otranto (Gutenberg ebook 696; includes Walpole's Preface to the First Edition and a short biographical introduction by H. M.). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/696/pg696.txt (accessed 2026-10-09)
4. Lewis, Matthew Gregory, Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900. Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Lewis,_Matthew_Gregory (accessed 2026-10-09)