About the Author
Matthew Lewis was born in London on July 9, 1775. The family’s wealth and social connections resulted in Lewis being educated at Oxford for a diplomatic career. Lewis found the work he did in the British embassy in Holland tedious, so with a head full of ghost stories from his early reading and travel, he turned his efforts to writing The Monk. He completed the novel in a few months at the age of nineteen. When his father died in 1812, Lewis inherited a sizable plantation in Jamaica and began working to improve the conditions of the slaves there. On a return trip in 1818, Lewis died of illness and was buried at sea.
