The Castle of Otranto
By Horace Walpole
Cover: Gotischer Dom am Wasser (Gothic Cathedral by the Water), 1813 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) · Wikimedia Commons (photograph by anagoria of the painting in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) · Public domain
The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. First published in 1764, it is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel in the subtitle – A Gothic Story. Set in a haunted castle, the novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetic of the book has shaped modern-day Gothic romance/horror books, films, art, music, and the Goth subculture.
Summary source: Wikipedia: The Castle of Otranto · CC BY-SA 4.0