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Monk (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

Book cover image of Monk (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) by Matthew G. Lewis

Authors: Matthew G. Lewis, E. A. Baker (Editor), Allen Grove
ISBN-13: 9781435108417, ISBN-10: 1435108418
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Date Published: June 2009
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Matthew G. Lewis

Matthew Lewis was born in London on July 9, 1775. The family’s wealth and social connections resulted in Lewis being educated at Oxford for a diplomatic career. Lewis found the work he did in the British embassy in Holland tedious, so with a head full of ghost stories from his early reading and travel, he turned his efforts to writing The Monk. He completed the novel in a few months at the age of nineteen. When his father died in 1812, Lewis inherited a sizable plantation in Jamaica and began working to improve the conditions of the slaves there. On a return trip in 1818, Lewis died of illness and was buried at sea.

Book Synopsis

Demon worship, imprisonment, illicit desire, rape. With such subject matter, it’s little surprise that Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk became a sensation as soon as it appeared in 1796. England’s reading public found the book so compelling that it went through numerous editions within the first couple years of its publication. Today, Matthew Lewis is widely recognized as a central figure in the history of Gothic fiction. In The Monk, he uses the novel’s twisting plots and supernatural machinery to expose the dangers of repressed desire, attack religious hypocrisy, and challenge late eighteenth-century definitions of virtue and propriety.

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