1850 Rare Gothic Book - The Castle of Otranto and The Enchanted Horse by Walpole

Author: Horace Walpole.
Title: The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story. With a Memoir of the Author. [Together with the tale “The Enchanted Horse.”]
Publisher: London and Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Company, Publishers to the University of Glasgow, [c. 1850s].
Language: Text in English.
Size: 7 x 5 inches. 
Pages: xiii-220 pages + publisher's catalogue.
Binding: Very good publisher’s original green pebble-grain cloth binding, decoratively blind-stamped in panels with corner foliate ornaments and central arabesque to the back board, the front board with a large circular gilt wreath enclosing the title. Spine richly gilt in compartments with floral tools and gilt titling (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. All edges gilt. Overall a bright, very attractive Victorian cloth binding.
Content: Good content (bright, tight, some light foxing or staining - as shown, previous owner’s printed bookplate (“Joseph Linton Hetherington”) to front pastedown - as shown, foxing and age-toning scattered through the preliminaries and around the engraved plates and title-page (as usual with this period paper), the main text otherwise mostly clean and pleasantly crisp, with only occasional small spots to the margins of approximately 6 pages - as shown). 
Illustrations: Complete with the engraved frontispiece showing a dramatic scene from The Castle of Otranto, facing the letterpress title with a wood-engraved portrait vignette of Horace Walpole within a decorative frame. Chapter I opens with a fine headpiece view of the castle amid swirling clouds and floral ornament; further small vignettes and textual cuts appear throughout the novel, highlighting key moments in the story (figures before gothic arches, staircases, and shadowed interiors). “The Enchanted Horse” is illustrated with its own headpiece and two striking full-page scenes with one of Prince Firouz Schah rescuing the princess on the flying horse above smoking braziers. 

Estimate: (USD 175–250).

The book: First published in 1764, The Castle of Otranto is generally regarded as the first true Gothic novel, the work that opens the door to an entire tradition—from Ann Radcliffe and Maturin to Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. This handsome mid-Victorian Griffin edition offers the tale in a format designed for the 19th-century family bookcase: sturdy decorative cloth, a memoir of the author, and a generous suite of wood-engraved illustrations that amplify the novel’s mixture of medieval romance, supernatural terror, and moral sentiment.

The volume is further enriched by the inclusion of “The Enchanted Horse,” a Persian-set fantasy tale (familiar from the Arabian Nights tradition) in which an ingenious mechanical horse carries its rider through the air. Its presence alongside Walpole’s story reflects Victorian readers’ appetite for exotic wonder tales and makes this copy a charming small anthology of early Gothic and Oriental romance under one binding. In this well-preserved state, with bright gilt and clean text, the book is both a pleasure to read and a decorative piece of early Gothic-fiction history.

The author: Horace Walpole (1717–1797), later 4th Earl of Orford, was the son of Britain’s first de facto Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. A man of letters, politician, and celebrated collector, he is equally remembered for his neo-Gothic villa at Strawberry Hill—one of the key sites of the Gothic revival in architecture—and for the private press he operated there. The Castle of Otranto, initially issued under the guise of a translated Italian manuscript, was quickly revealed as Walpole’s own invention and became a sensation. Its haunted castle, feudal tyrant Manfred, and ominous giant helmet helped to define the conventions of Gothic fiction and influenced generations of writers who followed.