Castle of Otranto/ Vahtek/ Nightmare Abbey

THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO by Horace Walpole First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular through the early 19th century. Walpole is the forerunner to such authors as Charles Robert Maturin, Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, and Daphne du Maurier. In the book Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the second edition, 'to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern'. He gives us a series of catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of identity, and exciting contests. Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole's own favourite among his numerous works. His friend, the poet Thomas Gray, wrote that he and his family, having read Otranto, were now 'afraid to go to bed o'nights'. NIGHTMARE ABBEY by Thomas Love Peacock This 1818 novel is set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock's contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry's son Scythrop (also modelled on a famous Romantic, Peacock's friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendental philosophy and develops a "passion for reforming the world." Disappointed in love, a sorrowful Scythrop decides the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances persuade him instead to follow his father in a love of misanthropy and Madeira. In addition to satire and comic romance, Nightmare Abbey presents a biting critique of the texts we view as central to British Romanticism. VATHEK by William Beckford Vathek (1786), originally written in French, remains one of the strangest eighteenth-century novels and one of the most difficult to classify. Perverse and grotesque comedy alternates with scenes of 'oriental' magnificence and evocative beauty in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek's journey to superb damnation among the subterranean treasures of Eblis. Underlying the elegant prose is a strong element of self-indulgent personal fantasy on the part of Beckford, youthful millionaire, dreamer, and eventually social outcast. Byron, Poe, Mallarme, and Swinburne are some of the literary figures who have admired Vathek's imaginative power.