Horace Walpole 
The Castle of Otranto 

The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first gothic novel as it merges medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture. The book begins on the wedding-day of his sickly son Conrad and princess Isabella. Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic helmet that falls on him from above. This inexplicable event is particularly ominous in light of an ancient prophecy, ’that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it’…