Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

views updated

Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

English author commonly known as "Monk" Lewis. He was born in London July 9, 1775. His father, Matthew Lewis, was deputy secretary of war and proprietor of several valuable estates in Jamaica; his mother, Anna Maria Sewell, was devoted to music and various other arts. The future author showed precocity during childhood, and he attended Westminster School. During this period his parents separated, although Lewis remained friendly with both his parents. In 1791 he visited Paris and attempted a novel and a farce.

In 1792 he went to Weimar in Germany where he met Johann Goethe and also learned German thoroughly. Two years later he was appointed attaché to the British Embassy at the Hague, where he wrote his famous sensational story, Ambrosio; or, The Monk. Completed in ten weeks and published in 1795, it earned him his nickname of "Monk" Lewis.

In 1796 Lewis became a member of Parliament for Hindon in Wiltshire. Residing chiefly in or near London, he met most of the notable people of the day. Meanwhile his interest in the occult had been developing, and in 1798 his play Castle Spectre was staged at Drury Lane. Ghosts and the like played a prominent part in this popular production, for the public greatly enjoyed Gothic romances. In 1788 Lewis published Tales of Terror and in 1801 the volume Tales of Wonder, which anthologized popular occult verses, including some by novelist Sir Walter Scott.

When Lewis' father died in 1812, the author found himself a very rich man. His conscience was troubled, nevertheless, because the wealth derived from slave labor. Lewis sailed to Jamaica in 1815 to arrange for generous treatment of the workers on his estates. Returning to England in 1816, he went soon afterward to Geneva, where he met Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Lewis made another visit to the West Indies in 1818 and died at sea May 14, 1818, while returning home.

The books of Lewis are memorable chiefly for the sensational way in which he exploited the rapidly developing public taste for gothic romance inaugurated by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho appeared in April 1794, and Lewis was greatly impressed by it before publishing his own Ambrosio; or, The Monk only a few months later.