The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally held to be the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century. Thus Castle and Walpole by extension is arguably the forerunner to such authors as Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, Daphne du Maurier, Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.

The Castle of Otranto is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It blends elements of realist fiction with the supernatural and fantastical, establishing many of the plot devices and character-types that would become typical of the Gothic: secret passages, clanging trapdoors, pictures moving and doors closing by themselves. The poet Thomas Gray told Walpole that the novel made "some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o’nights."

This book is unabridged and appears as it was first intended. First published in 1764.

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