The early Gothic novelists are an interesting lot. Matthew Lewis, known for his 1796 novel The Monk, wrote his will on a servant’s hat while dying on board a ship from Jamaica to the UK. William Beckford wrote the bestselling Gothic novel Vathek in French in 1782, with the English version being translated by a vicar four years later. Beckford was tutored in music by none other than Mozart for a short while – a product of his vast family fortune (built on the proceeds from Jamaican sugar plantations), comprising some £114 million in today’s money as well as Fonthill (where Beckford had the famous abbey built).
But neither Beckford nor Lewis can claim the honour of writing the first Gothic novel. That accolade goes to a third man, Horace Walpole, who was the son of the first de facto Prime Minister of Britain, Robert Walpole. But the odd thing is that, at first, Walpole didn’t even put his name to the novel. There was a good reason for this.
The 1760s was the decade of literary forgeries. One of the most famous forgeries which that decade produced was Horace Walpole’s 1764 book The Castle of Otranto, which is single-handedly responsible for founding the Gothic novel genre. Walpole claimed the story was a genuine sixteenth-century Italian manuscript which had recently been discovered and translated by a ‘William Marshal’. The literary world flocked to buy this exciting new book. His marketing ploy had worked: critics and readers would give their attention to a work of history, but had they known it was ‘only’ a work of fiction they would have dismissed the novel as a ‘romance’ with little real value or substance.
A year later, when the book was reprinted, Walpole added a preface in which he came clean and admitted that he’d made the whole thing up. In doing so, he founded not only a new literary genre but also one of the most perennial features of the Gothic story, the so-called ‘found’ manuscript. Many of the features of Gothic which endure today, such as the subterranean secret, the gloomy castle, and the mysterious ghostly sightings, were all used in Walpole’s novel. Without Walpole, it is doubtful whether there could have been any of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest short stories, Frankenstein, Dracula, or Daphne du Maurier. This one novel founded not only a genre but a whole style of writing.
Walpole got the idea for the novel from a dream he had: all he could recall when he woke was ‘that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head like mine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.’ The rest, as they say, is history – or rather not history, but fiction, since the whole thing sprang from Walpole’s imagination.
Walpole was also a prolific inventor of new words, and is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing over 200 words into the English language, among them beefy, malaria, nuance, sombre, and souvenir. Without doubt his most celebrated neologism was ‘serendipity’, meaning the ‘faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident’. He coined the word in a letter of 1754, when recounting the ‘silly fairy tale’ (‘fairy tale’ is another term he is credited with inventing) of ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ (Serendip being a former name for Sri Lanka). The tale is one of the earliest detective stories in existence: it recounts how three princes track down a missing camel largely through luck and good fortune, rather than any forensic skill. ‘Serendipity’ has been called one of the most difficult words to translate.
Walpole’s influence on the Gothic revival extended beyond literature. His London house, Strawberry Hill, was a vast villa that approached the scale and appearance of a castle. Walpole’s house became so celebrated that it gave its name not only to an area of London (near Twickenham and lying in the London borough of Richmond) but also to a style of architecture known as Strawberry Hill Gothic.
Image: Horace Walpole by Rosalba Carriera, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Great post. Interesting, fun. Write on.
Always found The Castle of Otranto a bit odd. Enjoyable, but odd.
And me. That giant helmet! The rambling plot! Must read it again…
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Meet New (to me) Authors Blog and commented:
Here is another author who added to the English language – and he did a great book marketing ploy to get sales :D
Fascinating! I have “Castle” on the TBR in a nice Wordsworth edition – sounds fun!
That is very interesting. I learned something new today, thank you.
Somehow I was unaware that Walpole claimed to have found the manuscript for Otranto, but that makes perfect sense given similar claims by authors at the time such as MacPherson claiming to have discovered the Ossian poems he published in 1760. It is also interesting because the claim that the first Gothic novel is a historical manuscript helps to explain why the Gothic really was the forerunner of the historical novel that we have today. Thanks as always for the great information.
Claimimg a fictitious old manuscript as a source is, of course, nothing new: Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century wasn’t the first but he also.gave rise to a new literary fad — Arthuriana.
Very true, although I dearly want to believe Geoffrey’s claim was true.
Reblogged this on 1WriteWay and commented:
Many interesting facts in this post from Interesting Literature. The Gothic novel has long been a favorite with me. More surprising and interesting, however, is the idea that even in the 18th century, readers had a preference for a true story over a fictional one.
Thanks a lot for this post.
My favorite genre is Gothic Fiction and I didn’t know Walpole was the one who started it. Time to hit the bookstore!
Absolutely fascinating! Another Walpole contemporary was Thomas Chatterton, with his “gothic” poetry and forgeries.
Reblogged this on sara33ia.
I believe I have another author’s works to explore… Awesome entry. :D
Intriguing topic. I wrote a dissertation on the Gothic novel years ago and was always fascinated by the original authors.
Your post is excellent in giving Walpole credit .
Reblogged this on Mistrz i Małgorzata and commented:
MNICH BY MATTHEW LEWIS
Reblogged this on Norah's Knowledge Bank 2014.
‘Sombre’ and ‘souvenir’ are not invented words — they’re French — but presumably Walpole was the first to use them in an English context (without italics or quotation marks?).
Reblogged this on robertbyron22 and commented:
Another fantastic post from the Interesting Literature blog. I’ll be looking up Horace Walpole this year as well.
Vathek is a very funny book. And Castle of Otranto, an enjoyable read too. I also happened to have a genius teacher for “The Gothic Novel” so it was an all-round highlight of my English degree. Thanks for the great post.
I didn’t enjoy Otranto at all, found it a rather silly melodrama famous because it happened to use tropes that caught on rather than for its intrinsic qualities. Lewis’ The Monk is a much better read, has a manic energy and a very gothic delight in degradation.
My golly, a whole treasure chest of nuggets in this one! you have almost surpassed yourselves Thank you
I knew the Walpole connection but the details about serendipity and Strawberry Hill Gothic I didn’t. This post took me back 20 years to when I studied the Gothic in Literature as part of my university degree. I then presented my thesis on the Gothic in Music for my Masters in Music Composition a few years later. Great times, fabulous stories :)
I like that Walpole wrote the novel from a dream. Dreams affect my own writing much of the time and I too began a novel from a vivid dream. It’s amazing to me, the power of the subconscious!
I barely acknowledge Walpole when trotting students through the literary timeline, but upon learning he created “serendipity”, why, I will have to give him his own PowerPoint slide now.
Thanks again for enlivening literature.
What a cool piece of history! Walpole’s inspiration for his story reminds me a little of the dream that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. :)
Reblogged this on Down My Front and commented:
What an interesting post- and lots of ideas to add to my reading list-Thanks!
Reblogged this on CEOnlineWriting Blog and commented:
One of the reasons Warpole didn’t claim authorship of The Castle of Otranto was that he wanted to present it as an historical account.
Reblogged this on sigurlaugs.