It’s the birthday of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), whose novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) ushered in an age of gothic romance that extends down through the likes of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Daphne du Maurier—all of whom were better writers of fiction than Walpole—and on into contemporary goth subculture.

Walpole was born in London, the sickly youngest child of Sir Robert Walpole, who was the first and longest-serving Prime Minister of Great Britain and therefore a Great Big Noise as far as British history goes. Walpole studied at Eton, where he became best buds with the poet Thomas Gray, and then at King’s College, Cambridge, though he never finished a degree. At 19, Walpole lost his mother; her death was one of the most devastating experiences of his life.

Walpole and Gray famously took the Grand Tour together as young men but then quarreled after many months of travel, and the friendship ended. They reconciled a few years later and Walpole ultimately claimed their breakup was mostly his fault, saying he was “too young, too fond of my own diversions,” etc. Soon after Walpole’s return to England, he was elected to Parliament, serving his first stint for 13 years, during which his father finally fell from power. (Thunk.) All told, Walpole served about 27 years, and while his career in politics was largely undistinguished, he was an early critic of slavery.

(Regarding Walpole’s relationship with his father: In The Castle of Otranto, the sickly son of the castle lord is killed by a gigantic falling mask. Something to think about.)

Walpole never married, and scholars argue about whether he was gay, asexual, or neither, so we’ll leave them to it. In 1747, at the age of 30, Walpole bought a plain little house in the town of Twickenham and named it Strawberry Hill. He then spent years transforming it into a Gothic masterpiece, adding turrets and arches and battlements and coining the term “gloomth” to describe the feel he was going for. As The Castle of Otranto sparked an age of gothic literature, so Strawberry Hill sparked a revival of gothic architecture.

Walpole also wrote a few letters, which have been collected in 48 volumes by Yale University Press. (Twenty life points to anyone out there who has written an actual letter in the past six months. Texts and tweets do not count. For crying out loud.)

For more on gothic novels, read this article here, “How to tell you’re reading a gothic novel – in pictures,” which I promise you’ll find amusing.

Have a cool, autumnal Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.