Horace Walpole (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797) was a British writer and politician who served as the Whig MP for Callington from 1741 to 1754, Castle Rising from 1754 to 1757, and King's Lynn from 1757 to 1769.
Biography[]
Horace Walpole was born in London, Middlesex, England on 24 September 1717, the son of the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, Robert Walpole. He dropped out of Cambridge before graduation, and, from 1739 to 1741, he embarked on a grand tour of Italy and France. Upon his return in 1741, he was elected to Parliament as the Whig MP for the rotten borough of Callington; he never visited Callington once in his life. In 1745, he spoke out against the Jacobite rising, and, starting in 1749, he built the Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham to serve as his estate (as Walpole was his father's third son, he would not inherit his father's estates). Despite his Hanoverian sympathies, he opposed absolutism and was concerned that infighting within the Whigs would allow for the Tory Party to regain power and allow for the King to return the country to absolute monarchy. In 1764, Walpole - who had already been well-known for his letters - published The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (and an inspiration for Dracula). His intensive literary activity was supported by his Strawberry Hill Press, and he coined the word "serendipity" as a reference to the fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. He left Parliament in 1768, and he spoke out against Catholic emancipation (claiming that one could not tolerate an intolerant religion) and became an active supporter of the Foxite Whigs. Despite his once radical views, he opposed the French Revolution due to his sympathy towards Queen Marie Antoinette. Walpole died childless in 1794 at the age of 79, having been theorized to have been either asexual or homosexual.