The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole's quaint attempt to transfer his taste for Gothick bric-a-brac into prose, began with a dream: "I waked one morning, in the beginning of last June (1764) from a dream, of which all I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle . . . and that on the upper-most banister of a great staircaise I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down to write. . . ."