The rise in the importance of social behaviour had not gone unnoticed by one Horace Walpole, the widely credited inventor of Gothic fiction. Walpole's knowledge of Chesterfield and the importance of manners perhaps influenced not only his work but carried over into other authors' novels dubbed "Gothic" as well. Walpole wrote what is generally accepted to be the first Gothic novel during Chesterfield's lifetime, "The Castle of Otranto" in 1764. It is theorised that the emergence of the novel of manners as a full genre was in retaliation to the rise in the popularity of the Gothic novel.