Ambrosio, Or The Monk

M.G. LEWIS Ambrosio, or the Monk There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk," would give nightmares to few modern readers.