Ambrosio, or The Monk [Christmas Summary Classics]

M.G. LEWIS
There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk," would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk" in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the hair of Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty successive nights, a long run in those days. Lewis, who was a wealthy man, sat for some years in Parliament; he had many distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott and Southey contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818.