MATTHEW LEWIS
Matthew Gregory Lewis, born in London on July 9, 1775, led a short but full life as a novelist, playwright, translator, poet, and humanitarian that was often clouded by his notorious and sensational talent for gothic romance. After his parents separated, Lewis was raised by his father, a War Office secretary who owned plantations in Jamaica. Although his mother encouraged young Lewis’s writing abilities from afar, later acting as his literary agent, his father sought a diplomatic career for him. After following in his father’s footsteps through Westminster School and Christ Church College at Oxford, and traveling to Paris and Weimar, Germany, the multilingual Lewis became an attache to the British Embassy in Holland in 1794.
During his travels, Lewis had already begun to write songs and plays, some of which would not be published for years, in an effort to financially support his mother. Lewis later claimed that, at nineteen, bored by his work at The Hague, he wrote The Monk in ten weeks; he later wrote of the novel, “I am myself so much pleased with it that, if the booksellers will not buy it, I shall publish it myself.” When he returned to England in late 1794, his father tried, unsuccessfully, to get him appointed to the War Office; meanwhile, he continued to write. The Monk was published in 1796, anonymously in the first edition, just as Lewis entered the House of Commons. Later editions acknowledged Lewis as the author of this frightening tale of a monk gone astray, and the book brought him wealth, fame, and a nickname: “Monk” Lewis. Many critics, however, most notably Samuel Coleridge, found Lewis’s debut—which blends sex and religious scandal—guilty of immorality, blasphemy, and plagiarism.
While The Monk did not directly affect Lewis’s political career, he was more interested in his role as a literary socialite and was ineffectual during his six years in Parliament. Those years were perhaps well spent in penning plays that reinforced Lewis’s reputation for macabre writing. Between 1796 and 1802, a host of his dramas were published and/or produced for stage at the Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, including Village Virtues: A Dramatic Satire, The Minister: A Tragedy, The Castle Spectre: A Drama, The Twins; or, Is It He, or His Brother?, The East Indian, Rolla; or, The Peruvian Hero, Adelmorn, the Outlaw: A Romantic Drama, and Alfonso, King of Castile: A Tragedy. The plays, some of which were translations, often reflected a gothic sensibility, especially the widely popular The Castle Spectre.
During those years, Lewis also dabbled in poetry, a form he had successfully incorporated into the narrative of The Monk. In 1799, he published a satire, The Love of Gain: A Poem, and in 1801, he combined original and translated poems of supernatural subject matter by himself and other authors, such as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, in an anthology titled Tales of Wonder. Critics continued to praise Lewis’s poetry, but his poor attribution skills led some to charge him as a plagiarist once again.
Although Lewis endured the death of his brother and a break with his father in the early 1800s, he continued to compose plays, poetry, and prose, to mixed reviews. His gruesome play The Captive: A Scene in a Private Mad-House was performed at Covent Garden in 1803, followed by a reincarnation of The Minister as The Harper’s Daughter; or, Love and Ambition. Rugantino; or the Bravo of Venice, a translation, played to favorable audiences at Covent Garden in 1805. In April 1807, two dramas were produced at Drury Lane: The Wood Daemon; or, “The Clock Has Struck” (a scenic romance whose title was later changed to One O’Clock: or, the Knight and the Wood Daemon) and Adelgitha; or, The Fruits of a Single Error: A Tragedy, a historical play that was successful both in publication and on stage. Lewis’s translation of a terrifying French play involving monks and nuns, Venoni; or, The Novice of St. Mark’s: A Drama, was produced at Drury Lane in 1808. His elaborately staged Timour the Tartar; A Grand Romantic Melo-Drama in Two Acts was well liked by audiences in 1811. Much of his other writing during this period consisted of translations, rewrites, and ephemeral ballads.
The year 1812 marked a turning point for Lewis. His collection of sentimental poetry, simply titled Poems, was published then; he had resolved to give up fiction writing. That same year, the death of his father brought about major changes in his life. In particular, a large inheritance made Lewis, who advocated abolition, a wealthy owner of land and slaves in Jamaica and set the stage for his remaining years.
Lewis took his first journey to Jamaica in 1815 to inspect his estate, and during the two-month voyage, he began a journal that surveyed the land and people of the island. He stayed in Jamaica for more than a year before sailing back to England, at which time he completed a gothic poem, “The Isle of Devils.” He traveled farther on to Italy, where he socialized with family and literary friends Percy and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. His concern for the treatment of his slaves, however, grew more intense, and Lewis returned to Jamaica in 1817 to set in motion a list of reforms. Lewis continued to keep his journal, a perceptive and lively account of his voyages and estate life, which he hoped to publish back in England. Sadly, he contracted yellow fever just before he set sail for home and died and was buried at sea on May 14, 1818. His memoir was finally published fifteen years later, as Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica. It was much praised.
Showcasing Lewis’s range in two vastly different styles, The Monk and the Journal are now considered his greatest contributions to literature—The Monk as a significant novel in the English gothic movement, and the Journal as an important social and humanitarian document.
INTRODUCTION
Hugh Thomas
What an extraordinary book it is! The Monk is well written, it is salacious, it is passionate, it is exciting, it is violent, and it is often very amusing. I do not quite know what the purpose of the book is, but then, what actually is the purpose of Treasure Island? The novel captures one’s imagination. When I was reading it recently, I took it to church, thinking that there might be a moment when nothing was happening and I could see whether the hero might escape from that terrible cottage near Strasbourg where he and his attendants had been caught by murderers in the middle of the night. Lewis would, I think, have been amused by this scene.
There are two remarkable points about The Monk. The first is that its author was only nineteen years of age when he wrote it—an astounding achievement. The second is that he seems to have written it rather fast: in ten weeks. Its success was the making of its author, who ever afterward was known in London as “Monk Lewis.”
This success occurred in March 1796, though some copies of the book printed in 1795 have apparently been found. England was at war with France in those days, and had been so since 1793. The government of William Pitt the Younger had at that point immediately embarked upon policies that sought to prevent the contagion of French revolutionary ideas, and must therefore be seen as having become a rather reactionary administration. Habeas corpus was suspended, for example, and the Traitorous Correspondence Bill was passed. The first attempts to abolish the slave trade in Britain, embarked upon by William Wilberforce in the House of Commons with the motion
