<p>The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel written by British author Horace Walpole. It is the first novel in Gothic literature, having inspired many later authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, Daphne du Maurier, and Stephen King. In the work, the author blends two types of novels: the ancient, dominated by imagination, and the modern, true to reality. The result is a mixture of the supernatural, ghostly visions, and inexplicable events on th...