Bibliography

Hazen, Allen T. A Bibliography of Horace Walpole. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948, 189 p.

The most complete bibliography of Walpole's writings.

Sabor, Peter. Horace Walpole: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984, 270 p.

Complete annotated bibliography of Walpole criticism through 1983.

Spector, Robert Donald. "The Beginnings: Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve." In The English Gothic: A Bibliographic Guide to Writers from Horace Walpole to Mary Shelley, pp. 83-110. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Surveys and describes the history of critical literature written on Walpole.

Biography

Dobson, Austin. Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 4th ed. Revised and enlarged by Paget Toynbee. London: Humphrey Milford, 1927, 395 p.

First reliable biography of Walpole, originally published in 1890. Dobson relies extensively on quotations from the Memoirs and Letters and includes a history of Walpole criticism.

Kallich, Martin. Horace Walpole. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971, 147 p.

Critical biography of Walpole, with an extensive discussion of his works.

Lewis, Wilmarth Sheldon. Horace Walpole. New York: Pantheon Books, 1960, 215 p.

Series of biographical lectures on Walpole's social and political lives, and his works.

Smith, Warren Hunting, ed. Horace Walpole: Writer, Politician, and Connoisseur. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967, 358 p.

Contains nineteen primarily biographical essays in three sections: "Walpole as Politician and Political Commentator," "Walpole as Connoisseur and Antiquarian," and "Walpole as a Literary Figure."

Stuart, Dorothy Margaret. Horace Walpole. New York: Macmillan, 1927, 229 p.

Biography of Walpole for the general reader. Stuart discusses several of Walpole's minor writings that are rarely discussed by other critics.

Yvon, Paul. La vie d'un dilettante: Horace Walpole (1717-1797); essai de biographie psychologique et letteraire. Paris: Les presses universitaires de France, 1924, 872 p.

The most thorough critical biography of Walpole to date.

Criticism

Bradford, Gamaliel. "The Letters of Horace Walpole." In Biography and the Human Heart, pp. 213-360. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932.

Summary of Walpole's era, his opinions, and his enthusiasms as revealed in his letters.

Brandenburg, Alice Stayert. "The Theme of The Mysterious Mother." Modern Language Quarterly 10 (December 1949): 464-74.

Discusses incest as the tragic theme of The Mysterious Mother.

Christie, Ian. "Walpole: The Gossip as Historian." History Today IV, No. 5 (May 1954): 291-300.

Discusses the importance of Walpole's letters as a history of his era.

Collins, Norman. "The Major Minor Novelists." In The Facts of Fiction, pp. 82-103. New York: Dutton, 1933.

Notes that The Castle of Otranto was significant to the development of the novel form in that Walpole changed "the story from a mere string of events into a cat's cradle of ingenious complexity" and laid "out a plot like a pattern … not merely uncoil[ing] it like a rope."

Cooke, Arthur L. "Some Side Lights on the Theory of the Gothic Romance." Modern Language Quarterly XII, No. 4 (December 1951): 429-36.

Supplements traditional critical theories of the Gothic with neglected "side lights," including Walpole's appeal to Aristotelian principles of tragedy.

Dobree, Bonamy. "Horace Walpole." In Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Essays in Honor of Alan Dugald McKillop, edited by Carroll Camden, pp. 185-200. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Discusses Walpole as a transitional figure between the Age of Reason and the Romantic age. To Dobree, Walpole was a reluctant Romantic, whose life was based on a tense dichotomy between his need to satisfy his impulses and his desires and his need to conform to social conventions.

Evans, Bertrand. Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947, 257 p.

Explores the role of the Gothic novel under British Romanticism, paying special attention to the motifs that Walpole initiated.

Haggerty, George E. "Literature and Homosexuality in the Late Eighteenth Century: Walpole, Beckford, and Lewis." Studies in the Novel XVIII, No. 4 (Winter 1986): 341-52.

Explores the recurring themes that appear in the writings of Walpole, Beckford, and Lewis as arising from their attitude toward their homosexuality.

Harfst, Betsy Perteit. Horace Walpole and the Unconscious: An Experiment in Freudian Analysis. New York: Arno Press, 1980, 264 p.

Analyzes Walpole's works as expressions of his repressed unconscious.

Haring-Smith, Tori. "The Gothic Novel: A Tale of Terrors Tamed." Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universitat Rostock XXXI, No. 8 (1982): 49-55.

Claims that "the Gothic novelist conveyed a comforting message by presenting a catalogue of contemporary fears and showing them overcome"; Haring-Smith discusses The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, The Italian, and The Old English Baron.

Havens, Munson Aldrich. Horace Walpole and the Strawberry Hill Press, 1757-1789. Canton, Penn.: Kirgate Press, 1901, 86 p.

History of Walpole's private press.

Honour, Hugh. Horace Walpole. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1957, 44 p.

Brief introduction to Walpole's works. Honour harshly appraises The Castle of Otranto.

Ker, W. P. "Horace Walpole." In English Prose: Selections, edited by Henry Craik, pp. 233-37. London: Macmillan, 1911.

Brief appraisal of the principle aspects of Walpole's prose style.

McWhir, Anne. "The Gothic Transgression of Disbelief: Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis." In Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression, edited by Kenneth W. Graham, pp. 29-47. New York: AMS Press, 1989.

Contends that the "separation of belief from fact is reflected in the Gothic novel, where the realm of superstition … becomes a vast image for the darkness and mystery of inner experience."

Mehrotra, K. K. Horace Walpole and the English Novel. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1934, 197 p.

Chronicles the arc of The Castle of Otranto' s creative influence, especially from 1764 to 1797.

Merritt, Edward Percival. Horace Walpole: Printer. Boston: Riverside Press, 1907, 67 p.

History of Walpole's private press and of private presses in England.

Punter, David. "Horace Walpole." In The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, pp. 49-53. London: Longman, 1980.

History of the Gothic novel that considers Walpole and Tobias Smollett the originators of the form.

Riely, John. "The Castle of Otranto Revisited." The Yale University Library Gazette LIII, No. I (July 1978): 1-17.

Considers the circumstances under which Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto and explores the public's reaction to the novel.

Rose, Edward J. "'The Queenly Personality': Walpole, Melville and Mother." Literature and Psychology XV, No. 4 (Fall 1965): 216-25.

Contrasts Walpole's novel The Mysterious Mother with Herman Melville's Pierre, focusing on the waysthat each author portrayed sexuality, guilt, and the enduring influence of the past on the present.

Solomon, Stanley J. "Subverting Propriety as a Pattern of Irony in Three Eighteenth-Century Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, and Fanny Hill." Erasmus Review I, No. 2 (November 1971): 107-16.

Considers that novels by Walpole, William Beckford, and John Cleland controverted literary propriety through irony and rejection of didacticism.

Steeves, Harrison R. "The Gothic Romance: Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Lewis." In Before Jane Austen. The Shaping of the English Novel in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 243-71. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965.

Finds The Castle of Otranto impossible to take seriously as anything but a literary landmark.

Summers, Montague. "Historical Gothic." In The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel, pp. 153-201. London: Fortune Press, 1938.

Credits Otranto twith inspiring a revolution in public taste. An excerpt from The Gothic Quest appears in the entry above

Woolf, Virginia. "Horace Walpole." The Times Literary Supplement (July 1919): 411.

Character study and analysis of Walpole's prose style.

Yvon, Paul. The Poetical Ideals of a Gentleman Author in the XVIIIth Century: Horace Walpole as a Poet. Paris: Les presses universitaires de France, 1924, 217 p.

Examines Walpole's theories of poetry, his poetic works, and his drama, and compares his poetry to the works of other poets of his era.

Additional coverage of Walpole's life and career is contained in the following sources published by The Gale Group: Literature Criticism 1400-1800, Vol. 2, and Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 39, 104.