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Horace Walpole Horry's godfather and namesake, Horace Walpole is said to be "rising sixty" years old when the novel opens in
1776.Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-97) was an English author. He was the son of Sir Robert Walpole. An admirer of the medieval, he built a pseudo-Gothic showplace castle at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham. The Picture to the left shows Strawberry Hill around 1774 and the picture the right is from around a year later in 1775. Walpole called Strawberry Hill, which he bought in 1749, "A little plaything of a house and the prettiest baubel you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows with filigree hedges."
Unfortunately the building was ruined in the mid-nineteenth century by one of Walpole's heirs, the dissolute eighth Earl of Waldegrave. The Earl sold off all the contents of the house first in a sale. In 1757 started a press there, publishing Thomas Gray's Pindaric odes and his own works. His reputation rests on more than 3,000 letters (1732-97) that give an invaluable picture of Georgian England. His gothic romance, The Castle of Otranto was published in 1765 and anticipated romanticism.
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