Horace Walpole, the younger son of Robert Walpole, the celebrated Prime Minister and leader of the Whigs, was born on September 24, 1717. As befitted a young aristocrat, he received a sound classical education at Eton, went on to the University of Cambridge, and rounded off the schooling proper to a young English lord with the Grand Tour of Europe — France, Switzerland, Italy. On his return, and under his father's influence, he took a seat in Parliament as a Whig.
In 1747 the young Walpole acquired a small estate on the bank of the Thames and set about remaking it to his own taste and fancy. He named it Strawberry Hill; in his dreams it was a "little Gothic castle." A printing press was set up there, from which a description of the estate was issued in a small edition; and living in seclusion, Horace assembled one of the largest and richest art collections in England.
In 1791, having no heirs, Walpole passed his title to a nephew; in 1797, at the age of eighty, he died in his own house. In his principal literary works, The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother, he stands as one of the founders of Pre-Romanticism, a celebrant of the Middle Ages.