SOURCE: "The First Gothic Tale: Its Potentialities," in The Gothic Flame, Russell & Russell, 1957.

In the following excerpt from The Gothic Flame (1957), Varma conjectures about the impetuses to Walpole's composing The Castle of Otranto and discusses its strong and lasting influence on the Gothic and other genres.

The Schauer-romantik, or "horror-romanticism", of the eighteenth century may be said to have originated one midsummer night, when Horace Walpole, sleeping beneath his stucco pinnacles at Strawberry Hill, dreamt he saw a giant hand in armour on the balustrade of the staircase. In this dream was born the first Gothic story, The Castle of Otranto: a bold and amazingly successful experiment in an absolutely untried medium. This immensely popular wild tale stands as a landmark in literary development and literary fashion. Although it has been alleged that this work is crude in attempt, incongruous and grotesque in its use of the supernatural...