In particular, a large inheritance made Lewis, who advocated abolition, a wealthy owner of land and slaves in Jamaica and set the stage for his remaining years.

Lewis took his first journey to Jamaica in 1815 to inspect his estate, and during the two-month voyage, he began a journal that surveyed the land and people of the island. He stayed in Jamaica for more than a year before sailing back to England, at which time he completed a gothic poem, “The Isle of Devils.” He traveled farther on to Italy, where he socialized with family and literary friends Percy and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. His concern for the treatment of his slaves, however, grew more intense, and Lewis returned to Jamaica in 1817 to set in motion a list of reforms. Lewis continued to keep his journal, a perceptive and lively account of his voyages and estate life, which he hoped to publish back in England. Sadly, he contracted yellow fever just before he set sail for home and died and was buried at sea on May 14, 1818. His memoir was finally published fifteen years later, as Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica. It was much praised.

Showcasing Lewis’s range in two vastly different styles, The Monk and the Journal are now considered his greatest contributions to literature—The Monk as a significant novel in the English gothic movement, and the Journal as an important social and humanitarian document.

CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
INTRODUCTION by Hugh Thomas
THE MONK
PREFACE
TABLE OF THE POETRY
ADVERTISEMENT
VOLUME I
chap. I
chap. II
chap. III
VOLUME II
chap. IV
chap. V
chap. VI
chap. VII
VOLUME III
chap. VIII
chap. IX
chap. X
chap. XI
chap. XII
NOTES
SUGGESTED READING
READING GROUP GUIDE
A NOTE ON THE TEXT

INTRODUCTION

Hugh Thomas

What an extraordinary book it is! The Monk is well written, it is salacious, it is passionate, it is exciting, it is violent, and it is often very amusing. I do not quite know what the purpose of the book is, but then, what actually is the purpose of Treasure Island? The novel captures one’s imagination. When I was reading it recently, I took it to church, thinking that there might be a moment when nothing was happening and I could see whether the hero might escape from that terrible cottage near Strasbourg where he and his attendants had been caught by murderers in the middle of the night. Lewis would, I think, have been amused by this scene.

There are two remarkable points about The Monk. The first is that its author was only nineteen years of age when he wrote it—an astounding achievement. The second is that he seems to have written it rather fast: in ten weeks. Its success was the making of its author, who ever afterward was known in London as “Monk Lewis.”

This success occurred in March 1796, though some copies of the book printed in 1795 have apparently been found. England was at war with France in those days, and had been so since 1793. The government of William Pitt the Younger had at that point immediately embarked upon policies that sought to prevent the contagion of French revolutionary ideas, and must therefore be seen as having become a rather reactionary administration. Habeas corpus was suspended, for example, and the Traitorous Correspondence Bill was passed. The first attempts to abolish the slave trade in Britain, embarked upon by William Wilberforce in the House of Commons with the motion “This House advocates the abolition of the slave trade,” had come to an end in 1792 with the insertion of the word “gradual” before the word “abolition.” This philanthropic endeavor was also a casualty of the war with France.

The United States, meantime, was drawing to the end of the administration of George Washington. He would be succeeded next year by the vice president, John Adams.