Bøger af Matthew Gregory Lewis

Matthew 'Monk' Lewis (1775-1818) is best known as a writer of plays and 'Gothic' novels such as The Monk (from which he acquired his nickname). On the death of his father in 1812, he inherited a large fortune, including estates in Jamaica. He spent four months there in 1815, during which time much of this Journal of a West India Proprietor was written. He became interested in the condition of the slaves on his estates, and on returning to England made contact with William Wilberforce and other abolitionists. The improvements he made on his own estates were unpopular with other landholders, but foreshadowed the reforms of the 1830s, when the Journal was published. He revisited the island in 1817, but died of yellow fever on the way home. S. T. Coleridge regarded the Journal as Lewis' best work, and the one most likely to be of lasting value.

In the late eighteenth century, Matthew Gregory 'Monk' Lewis, a notorious author of lurid Gothic novels and plays, began to gather this collection of horror ballads. This title presents an eclectic collection of stories and ballads gathered by an early master of Gothic horror. It also includes ballads by Lewis, and the young Walter Scott.

The main plot of the Gothic novel, 'The Monk', concerns Ambrosio, an abbot of irreproachable holiness, who is seduced by a woman disguised as a novice, and who goes on to sell his soul to the Devil. An extravagant blend of sex, death, politics, Satanism and poetry.