M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis
1 book in the library
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) was an English novelist and playwright, born in London and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. While working as an attaché at the British embassy in The Hague he wrote The Monk, published in 1796, when he was twenty. The novel’s sensation, and its scandal, earned him the lasting nickname “Monk” Lewis. The same year he entered Parliament, and his Gothic play The Castle Spectre (1797) was a great success at Drury Lane. He translated and imitated German ballads and compiled the anthology Tales of Wonder. Having inherited sugar plantations in Jamaica, he travelled there twice and tried to improve the conditions of the enslaved people who worked them; his Journal of a West India Proprietor was published after his death. He died of yellow fever at sea in 1818, on his voyage home.
