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![]() It was notably one of the seven "horrid novels" referred to by Jane Austen in her novel “Northanger Abbey” and revolves around the Marquis of Grosse, who finds himself in the middle of a secret revolution arising from a society which employs mayhem and murder in their pursuit of an early form of communism. “The Horrid Mysteries” is the English translation by Peter Will of the German Gothic novel “Der Genius by Carl Grosse”. The genre's origin is attributed to the novel, “The Castle of Otranto”, which was written by English author Horace Walpole and first published in 1764. ![]() Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that usually combines fiction with horror, romance, and death. ![]() Also included is Sir Walter Scott’s introduction to the 1811 edition of The Castle of Otranto. ![]() Appendices in this edition include selections from Walpole’s letters, contemporary responses, and writings illustrating the aesthetic and intellectual climate of the period. Walpole’s brooding and intense drama, The Mysterious Mother, focuses on the protagonist’s angst over an act of incest with his mother, and includes the appearance of Father Benedict, Gothic literature’s first evil monk. ![]() Published on Christmas Eve, 1764, on Walpole’s private press at Strawberry Hill, his Gothicized country house, The Castle of Otranto became an instant and immediate classic of the Gothic genre as well as the prototype for Gothic fiction for the next two hundred years. This Broadview edition pairs the first Gothic novel with the first Gothic drama, both by Horace Walpole. ![]()
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