The Castle of Otranto

Manfred, lord of Otranto, holds his castle under a doubtful title. An old prophecy warns that it will leave his family once the true heir becomes too big for the building to hold him. Then Manfred's sickly son Conrad is crushed by a huge helmet that falls from nowhere, on the very morning he is to marry Isabella.

Manfred wants an heir at any cost. He decides to divorce his gentle wife Hippolita and marry Isabella himself. She escapes through the castle's underground passages with help from a young peasant, Theodore, and claims sanctuary with the friar Jerome.

Pursuit follows, along with apparitions and statues and armour that move. These sit alongside the intrigues of a medieval household: Isabella's father Frederic arrives, marriages become bargaining chips, and Manfred's daughter Matilda, loyal to her family, is drawn to Theodore.

The setting is a vaguely Crusader-era Italy. Horace Walpole first presented the book as a translated old manuscript, then admitted authorship and added the subtitle "A Gothic Story" in the second edition. It is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, and its haunted castle, tyrannical lord and endangered heroine shaped later Gothic fiction. Short and fast, it moves toward the prophecy's fulfilment and the fall of Manfred's house.