The Monk

A revered abbot of Madrid, famous for never having sinned, is approached by a novice who is not what he seems. Lewis was nineteen and a junior diplomat when he wrote it in ten weeks; the book made him notorious, forced a bowdlerized later edition, and drew a public attack from Coleridge, who called it a poison for youth. It is the most extreme thing the Gothic ever produced, and the Inquisition arrives before the end. Thirty-three plates by painters including Goya and Caravaggio supply the Spanish court, tavern and cloister that Lewis's feverish tale of a Madrid abbot requires.