1854 Rare First US Edition - The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story by Horace Walpole

 

Author : Horace Walpole
Title : The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story.
Publisher : Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1854. First American edition.
Language : Text in English
Size : 7.5 " X 5 "
Pages : 221-24(Baird's catalogue) pages
Binding : Very good full cloth binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content : Very good content  (bright and tight, exlibris on first endpaper of Henry Holmes Babcock from Hamilton, New York where he was born in 1821. In 1845 Babcock founded a company which manufactured wooden pumps and water pipes and other associated pumping. Later they expanded to windmills which became very popular and well-known throughout the US.) 
 

The book : Rare first US edition of the The Castle of Otranto -- a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. 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". The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture.

The author: Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), also known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. They have been published by Yale University Press in 48 volumes.