Novel
The Monk
Matthew Lewis · 1796
Synopsis
Madrid. Ambrosio, superior of the Capuchins, is thirty; taken in as an infant at the abbey door, he has hardly ever passed beyond its walls. All Madrid comes to hear him preach, calls him the man of holiness and fights over the beads of his rosary. Rosario, a young novice he cherishes, confesses to him one night in the garden that she is a woman, Matilda, who entered in disguise to live near him, and threatens to stab herself if he drives her out. Later, a young stranger, Antonia, comes to ask him for a confessor for her dying mother.
Context
The book was written in ten weeks by a nineteen-year-old boy and appeared anonymously in March 1796; when its author, by then a Member of Parliament, signed it for the second edition, adding his title, the scandal broke, made worse by that status. Prosecution was considered, and in 1798 he published an expurgated version. The most famous review appeared in February 1797 from the pen of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who praised the talent while denouncing the use made of Scripture in the seventh chapter. Its author bore the name of his book until his death.
Who it is for
A novel of about four hundred and fifty pages in paperback, with violence and eroticism that were explicit for its time; it exists in an expurgated version and in the original version.
Prizes and reception
It caused a scandal on publication; Sade placed it above Radcliffe in his essay on novels, and it weighed on the French Gothic novel.
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