Horatio Walpole, often known as Horace Walpole, was an English author, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London, restoring the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary renown is built on the first Gothic book, The Castle of Otranto (1764), as well as his Letters, which are both socially and politically significant. Yale University Press released them in 48 volumes. In 2017, a collection of Walpole's selected letters was published. The youngest son of the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, he succeeded his nephew as the 4th and final Earl of Orford of the second creation when he died in 1791. Walpole was born in London as the youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole and his wife, Catherine. He, like his father, obtained his early education at Bexley, where he was partly taught by Edward Weston. He was also schooled at Eton College and King's College in Cambridge. Walpole's first pals were possibly his cousins Francis and Henry Conway, to whom he developed close feelings, particularly Henry. He founded a schoolboy confederacy known as the "Triumvirate" at Eton with Charles Lyttelton (later an antiquary and bishop) and George Montagu (later a member of parliament and Private Secretary to Lord North). Another group of friends known as the "Quadruple Alliance" included Walpole, Thomas Gray, Richard West, and Thomas Ashton.
