Author: Lewis, Matthew Gregory
Biography:
LEWIS, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818: ODNB)
Lewis was the eldest of four legitimate children of Frances Maria (Sewell) and Matthew Lewis. His father, who held a post in the War Office, owned plantations in Jamaica; his uncle on his mother's side became Attorney-General of Jamaica. But when Lewis was six, his parents separated and his mother had a child with another man; as an adult, Lewis did what he could to support her. He attended Westminster School and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford. As an undergraduate he spent time in France and Germany to improve his language skills, because his father hoped to make him into a diplomat. Instead, through translations, adaptations, and imitations, he became an important figure in the transmission of German Romanticism. He enjoyed theatre and had already composed (but not published) a farce and a comedy for the stage. In 1794 he translated Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. In 1796, the year in which he took up a seat in the House of Commons as MP for a rotten borough, he published The Monk, a sensational Gothic novel that ran to many editions (including an expurgated version, now known as Antonio, in 1798) and made his name in popular culture: he has ever since been "Monk Lewis." Committed now to a literary career, he produced several plays for London theatres between 1797 and 1811, of which the most successful was Castle Spectre (1797, published 1798). He also produced more translations from the German and collaborated with Scott and Southey (qq.v.) in Tales of Wonder (1801). Lewis never married. On the death of his father in 1812 he inherited the estate. He devoted most of his remaining years to providing for the family and attempting to reform the treatment of the slaves on his plantations. It was on a return voyage from Jamaica in 1818 that he contracted yellow fever and died; he was buried at sea. His record of two periods of residence in Jamaica was published posthumously as Journal of a West Indian Proprietor (1834). (ODNB 14 Nov. 2019) HJ
Other Names:
- M. G. Lewis