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Matthew Gregory Lewis, by Henry William Pickersgill, 1809

Matthew Gregory Lewis (9 July 1775 – 14 May 1818) was an English novelist and dramatist, often referred to as "Monk" Lewis, because of the success of his classic Gothic novel, The Monk.

Biography

Intended for a diplomatic career, Matthew Lewis spent most of his vacations abroad to study modern languages, and in 1794 went to the Hague as attaché to the British embassy. Although he only stayed a few months, it was there that he produced, in ten weeks, his romance Ambrosio, or the Monk, which was published in the summer of the following year. It immediately achieved celebrity for Lewis; but some passages in the work were of such a nature that about a year after its appearance, an injunction to restrain its sale (a rule nisi) was obtained. Lewis published a second edition from which he removed what he assumed were the objectionable passages, but the work retained much of its horrific character. Lord Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers wrote of "Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell." The Marquis de Sade also praised Lewis in his essay "Reflections on the Novel".

Whatever its weaknesses, ethical or aesthetic, may have been, The Monk did not interfere with the reception of Lewis into the best society; he was favourably noticed at court, and almost as soon as he came of age he obtained a seat in the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hindon in Wiltshire. After some years, during which he never addressed the House, he finally withdrew from a parliamentary career. His tastes lay wholly in the direction of literature, and his play The Castle Spectre (1796) enjoyed a long popularity on the stage. The Minister (a translation from Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe), Rolla (1797, a translation from August von Kotzebue), and numerous other operatic and tragic pieces, appeared in rapid succession. The Bravo of Venice, a romance translated from the German, was published in 1804; after The Monk it is his best known work. The death of his father left him with large fortune, and in 1815 he set off for the West Indies to visit his estates; in the course of this tour, which lasted four months, the Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, published posthumously in 1833, was written. A second visit to Jamaica was undertaken in 1817, in the hope of becoming more familiar with, and able to ameliorate, the condition of the slave population; the fatigues to which he exposed himself in the tropical climate brought on a fever which resulted in his death during the homeward voyage. Lewis held two estates, Cornwall estate in Westmoreland and Hordley estate in St Thomas in the East. According to the slave registers Hordley was co-owned with George Scott and Matthew Henry Scott and their shares were purchased by Lewis in 1817.^[1]

Lewis visited Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley at Geneva, Switzerland in the summer of 1816 and recounted five ghost stories which Shelley recorded in his "Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on return to England, 1816", beginning with the entry for August 18, which was published posthumously.

The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis, in two volumes, was published in 1839. The Effusions of Sensibility, his first novel, was never completed.

Works

• The Effusions of Sensibility (unfinished novel)
• The Monk (1796)
• The Castle Spectre (1796)
• Tales of Wonder (1801)
• The Bravo of Venice (1805)
• Romantic Tales (1808)
• Journal of a West Indian Proprietor (1833)
• The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis (1839)

• "My Uncle’s Garret Window"

See also

• The Monk

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Online edition of The Monk
• Works by Matthew Gregory Lewis at Project Gutenberg
• Romantic tales, Vol. 1, Matthew Gregory Lewis, 1809, (M. & W. Ward, NY)

From Wikiquote

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-07-09 – 1812-05-17) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, translator and Member of Parliament. His novel The Monk, written at the age of 19, was one of the most popular examples of Gothic fiction, and led to his being commonly known as Monk Lewis.

Sourced

• Hark! hark! – What mean those yells – those cries?
  His chain some furious madman breaks!
  He comes! I see his glaring eyes!
  Now! now! my dungeon bars he shakes.
  Help! Help! He's gone! Oh! fearful woe,
  Such screams to hear – such sights to see!
  My brain! my brain! – I know, I know
  I am not mad, but soon shall be.
  • "The Captive"; cited from The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis (London: Henry Colburn, 1839) vol. 1, pp. 239-40.

• Farewel, thou cruel world! – to morrow
  No more thy scorn my heart shall tear: –
  The grave will shield the child of sorrow,
  And heaven will hear the orphan's prayer.
  • "The Orphan's Prayer", line 29; cited from Titus Strong (ed.) The Common Reader (Greenfield, Mass.: Denio & Phelps, 1819) p. 174.

The Monk (1796)

Quotations are cited from Howard Anderson's edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). For the 4th edition (1798), and some later ones, the title was changed to Ambrosio, or the Monk.

• An Author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an Animal whom every body is privileged to attack; For though All are not able to write Books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.
  • Page 198.

• Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study.
  • Page 259.

• A Warrior so bold, and a Virgin so bright
  Conversed, as They sat on the green:
  They gazed on each other with tender delight;
  Alonzo the Brave was the name of the Knight,
  The Maid's was the Fair Imogine.
  • Page 313; "Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine", line 1.

• "Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said,
  "Offensive to Love and to me!
  For if ye be living, or if ye be dead,
  I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead
  Shall Husband of Imogine be."
  • Page 313; "Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine", line 11.

• The worms, They crept in, and the worms, They crept out,
  And sported his eyes and his temples about,
  While the Spectre addressed Imogine.
  • Page 315; "Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine", line 59.

Criticism

• Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
  Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?
  Has the state no controul, no decent awe,
  While each with each in madd'ning orgies vie
  Pandars to lust and licens'd blasphemy?
  Can senates hear without a kindred rage?
  Oh may a poet's lightning blast the page,
  Nor with the bolt of Nemesis in vain
  Supply the laws, that wake not to restrain!
  • Thomas James Mathias The Pursuits of Literature, revised edition (1797), Dialogue 4, line 316.

• All hail, M. P.! from whose infernal brain
  Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
  At whose command "grim women" throng in crowds,
  And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
  With "small gray men," "wild yagers," and what not,
  To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
  Again all hail! if tales like thine may please,
  St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease;
  Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
  And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.
  • Lord Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 273.

• He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghost-stories and German romances.
  • Walter Scott, manuscript note written in 1825; cited from J. G. Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) p. 81 col. 2.

• Matthew Lewis [was] the genre's first punk, the Johnny Rotten of the Gothic novel.
  • Stephen King, in Matthew Lewis The Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. vi.

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Matthew Lewis (writer)