Editing Horror fiction (section)

===18th century===
 [[File:Horace Walpole.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Horace Walpole]] wrote the first [[Gothic novel]], ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]'' (1764), initiating a new literary genre.<ref name="Walpole"/>]]
The 18th century saw the gradual development of [[Romanticism]] and the [[Gothic fiction|Gothic horror]] genre. It drew on the written and material heritage of the [[Late Middle Ages]], finding its form with [[Horace Walpole]]'s seminal and controversial 1764 novel, ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]''. In fact, the first edition was published disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy, discovered and republished by a fictitious translator.<ref name="Walpole"/> Once revealed as modern, many found it [[anachronism|anachronistic]], [[reactionary]], or simply in poor taste, but it proved immediately popular.<ref name="Walpole">[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30313775 "The Castle of Otranto: The creepy tale that launched gothic fiction"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190703063419/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30313775 |date=3 July 2019 }}. BBC. Retrieved 15 July 2017</ref>

''Otranto'' inspired ''[[Vathek]]'' (1786) by [[William Thomas Beckford|William Beckford]], ''[[A Sicilian Romance]]'' (1790), ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'' (1794), ''[[The Italian (Radcliffe novel)|The Italian]]'' (1796) by [[Ann Radcliffe]], and ''[[The Monk]]'' (1797) by [[Matthew Lewis (writer)|Matthew Lewis]].<ref name="Walpole"/> A significant amount of horror fiction of this era was written by women and marketed towards a female audience, a typical scenario of the novels being a resourceful female menaced in a gloomy castle.<ref>{{cite book|author=Richard Davenport-Hines|year=1998|title=Gothic: 1500 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin|place=London|publisher=Fourth Estate}}</ref>