Walpole's Gothicism was an accidental "sport" from his general
virtuosity; so his romanticism was a casual outgrowth of his
architectural amusements. Strawberry Hill begat "The Castle of Otranto,"
whose title is fitly chosen, since it is the castle itself that is the
hero of the book. The human characters are naught. "Shall I even
confess to you," he writes to the Rev. William Cole (March 9, 1765),
"what was the origin of this romance? I waked one morning in the
beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was,
that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for
a head filled, like mine, with Gothic story), and that, on the uppermost
banister of a great staircase, I saw a gigantic hand in armor. In the
evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what
I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands. . . In short, I
was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months,
that one evening I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six
o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morning."

"The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story," was published in 1765.[12]
According to the title page, it was translated from the original Italian
of Onuphrio Muralto--a sort of half-pun on the author's surname--by W.
Marshall, Gent. This mystification was kept up in the preface, which
pretended that the book had been printed at Naples in black-letter in
1529, and was found in the library of an old Catholic family in the north
of England. In the preface to his second edition Walpole described the
work as "an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and
the modern": declared that, in introducing humorous dialogues among the
servants of the castle, he had taken nature and Shakspere for his models;
and fell foul of Voltaire for censuring the mixture of buffoonery and
solemnity in Shakspere's tragedies. Walpole's claim to having created a
new species of romance has been generally allowed. "His initiative in
literature," says Mr. Stephen, "has been as fruitful as his initiative in
art. 'The Castle of Otranto,' and the 'Mysterious Mother,' were the
progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and probably had a strong
influence upon the author of 'Ivanhoe.' Frowning castles and gloomy
monasteries, knights in armor and ladies in distress, and monks, and
nuns, and hermits; all the scenery and characters that have peopled the
imaginatio