Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto

Herausgeber: 1stworld Library

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first Crusade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards. There is no other circumstance in the work that can lead us to guess at the period in which the scene is laid: the names of the actors are evidently fictitious, and probably disguised on purpose: yet the Spanish names of the domestics seem to indicate that this work was not composed until the establishment of the Arragonian Kings in Naples had made Spanish appellations familiar in that country. The beauty of the diction, and the zeal of the author (moderated, however, by singular judgment) concur to make me think that the date of the composition was little antecedent to that of the impression. Letters were then in their most flourishing state in Italy, and contributed to dispel the empire of superstition, at that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: 1st World Library - Literary Society
• Seitenzahl: 148
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Mai 2005
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 8mm
• Gewicht: 196g
• ISBN-13: 9781421804545
• ISBN-10: 1421804549
• Artikelnr.: 21109855

Autorenporträt

Horace Walpole (24 September 1717 - 2 March 1797) was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. He was the youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole and was educated at Eton College and King's College in Cambridge.Walpole's lasting architectural creation is Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south west of London, which at the time overlooked the Thames. Here he revived the Gothic style many decades before his Victorian successors. This fanciful neo-Gothic concoction began a new architectural trend.