Horace Walpole

Horatio Walpole (1717 – 1797) was the 4th Earl of Orford, an English writer, art historian, antiquarian and Whig politician; son of the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest.