Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole was an eighteenth-century British author, letter writer, art historian and printer associated with Strawberry Hill. A Letter from Xo Ho A Chinese Philosopher at London, issued in 1757 under a longer title, uses an imagined visitor’s perspective for political satire. The Castle of Otranto appeared anonymously in 1764 before Walpole acknowledged authorship in its second edition; its medieval setting and supernatural machinery helped establish the Gothic novel. Notes on the Poems of Alexander Pope was published posthumously in 1876 from Walpole’s annotations to a copy of Pope, with Sir William Augustus Fraser involved in bringing the material into print. Walpole’s work thus ranges from satire and criticism to an influential experiment in fiction.