The Castle of Otranto

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Summary: I found this book very good and a bit scary.
Review: Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole I found that this book, was a very good book. It was so good that I felt that I was in the book. Throughout most of the book I was feeling cold shivers dancing up and down my spine, especially when Manfred chased Princess Isabella. The one part that I didn't like was when the son of the friar was wrongly accused of killing Conrad, and then threatened with execution. I also didn't like it when Matilda died.

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Summary: Leading the Way
Review: Everything that can be said is almost certainly expressed in the comprehensive introduction to this fine edition.
I will attempt to review it anyhow as I enjoyed this literary, pioneering work immensely and hopefully my pale (in comparision to Walpole's and his peers) words might incite others to enjoy the first(claimed to be by many anyhow) gothic book written.

I am going to provide a brief synopsis although one has been provided in hopes of conveying how big and active the plot is of this novel. Manfred, Prince of Otronto prepares for his son' wedding day, but suddenly his son is crushed by a giant helmet. Not confident his wife would provide him with another male heir to carry on his line Manfred decides he wishes to marry his passed son's fiancee, Isabella. Fearing a marriage to tyrannical Manfred Isabella flees with help of the peasant Theodore, and finds sanctuary with the monk Jerome.
As Manfred tries to convince Jerome to bless his marriage to Isabella(and grant divorce from his wife)emmisaries from Isabella's family arrive at the castle. There is question of the legimitacy to Manfred's claim to the princedom of Otronto it seems and the rightful heir is Isabella's father one of the reasons Manfred is so keen on a marital union between the families. This all happens in the first fifty or sixty pages, and even as summed up I failed to really express how much takes place in this little book. Let's just say this is a dense plot, so much happening in so little time.
I tried to finish this book in time to post my review ofr it on Halloween, but The Castle of Otronto is not a book that can be called a fast read, nor is it a book you wish to skim pages on.
Walpole successfully blended romance and supernatural suspense leading the way in a genre of fiction that is still emulated and popular to this day.
The Castle of Otronto is a great Gothic novel and it is also a great novel period.

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Summary: Best edition available
Review: Finally someone has provided us with a readable, absorbing, and correct edition of this novel. I've always found this a difficult work, but the introduction and notes are wonderful, reading the book as camp and as opera. The hundreds of errors in the Oxford University Press edition are finally corrected here, and the appendix (providing 75 years of responses to Walpole's romance) makes for hilarious reading. Without question the best available teaching text.

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Summary: The Broadview Edition of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto
Review: Prospective buyers and users should take note that the Customer Reviews posted on Amazon.com are erroneous. They pertain to previous
editions of Walpole's Gothic novel and do not apply to the Broadview edition. A unique feature of the Broadview edition is the inclusion of Walpole's drama, The Mysterious Mother, sometimes mentioned by literary historians as the first Gothic drama. Thus, the user has at his disposal two important prototypes of the Gothic novel. Appendices include excerpts from Burke's treatise on the sublime, Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, the Graveyard poets, Hervey's Meditations Among the Tombs, Walpole's correspondence, and the eccentric architectural splendors of Strawberry Hill, Walpole's Gothicized villa on the Thames. I am the edition's editor, Frederick S. Frank, another fact omitted from the Amazon.com descriptor.