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Horace Walpole
2 free books by Horace Walpole. 2 you can read right here.
Born 1717 in London · Died 1797 in London
writer, novelist · Kingdom of Great Britain
Notable works: The Castle of Otranto
Facts from Wikidata (Q309903), retrieved 2026-09-26.
- Hieroglyphic TalesProject Gutenberg ebook 14098 · Read here →
- The Castle of Otranto1764 · Read here →
Quotes from Horace Walpole’s books
Verified word for word in the text: each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. How RedLectern is built.
The Castle of Otranto
From Project Gutenberg e-text #696 (public domain in the USA).
“Where’er a casque that suits this sword is found, With perils is thy daughter compass’d round; Alfonso’s blood alone can save the maid, And quiet a long restless Prince’s shade.”
— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV
They attributed this hasty wedding to the Prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced that the castle and lordship of Otranto “should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.”