From Horace Walpole's own 1785 introduction: "The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island, not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born. We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure everybody will believe them as much as if they had seen them..."

Author Biography

Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717 - 1797) - also known as Horace Walpole - was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764) and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest.