Matthew Lewis

Matthew G. Lewis, born in 1775, was nineteen when he wrote The Monk. The book gained the young author such renown that he was permanently dubbed “Monk” Lewis. A leading pre-Romantic figure, he lived in England but spent his last years in Jamaica and, for a brief period, in Italy, where he traded ghost stories with Shelley and Byron at Villa Diodati. In 1818, on a return voyage from Jamaica, he died of yellow fever and was buried at sea.