In revised form it appears to have been first published in The Yale Review, October, 1926. Along with other essays, it first appeared in book form in Woolf's The Common Reader: Second Series in 1932.

    

    Walpole wrote horror novels that tended more towards the psychological rather than supernatural, with a brooding underlying mysticism. The book begins: It would be flattering to my intelligence were I able to make this Essay a learned and analytical description of any reader's proper mental processes. I have seen such books, books that point out so clearheadedly what must be read at eight, eighteen, twenty-eight, with careful lists of the fifty best volumes, and cold and impassive descriptions of the world's most famous writers. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.