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  • Published: 22 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141974491
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

The Monk




The new paperback series: Penguin English Library

With an essay by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

'He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration ... doomed to perish in tortures the most severe'

Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

  • Published: 22 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141974491
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

Other books in the series

On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Matthew Lewis

Matthew Lewis was born on 9 July 1775 in London. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He later worked as an attaché to the British Embassy in Holland and an MP. When he was nineteen years old he wrote The Monk, which was published in 1796 and became a huge popular success, leading to the author being nicknamed 'Monk Lewis'. Lewis also wrote plays, poetry, translations and a memoir. He died on 14 May 1818 on a voyage home from the estate he had inherited in Jamaica.