Widely acknowledged as the first Gothic novel, "The Castle of Otranto" is a tale of greed, lust, terror, and retribution. After her fiance is mysteriously slain just before they are to be married, Isabella must ward off the attentions of Manfred, her fiance`s father, who schemes to marry her despite the existence of a living wife. In "The Old English Baron," the peasant-born but distinguished Edmund is welcomed into the family of the local baron, where he discovers a hidden enemy and uncovers a ghostly secret. These stories have been carefully edited to follow current American practice with respect to punctuation and paragraphing.