Alec’s Reviews > Three Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, The Vampyre, and a Fragment of a Novel > Status Update

'The Castle of Otranto' is the first Gothic novel ever written. However, where it succeeds in precedence it falls down in simple storytelling and quality of writing. The supernatural elements of the novel are pretty clumsy, and altogether unconvincing, and most of the novel resorts to the romantic affairs of a bunch of chivalric sterotypes.