Full Description
This volume provides a comprehensive account of the oeuvre of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), from his juvenilia through to his romances and shorter tales, dramas, translations, adaptations, ballads, poetry and editorial endeavours, and into his posthumously published writings on slavery. Across an extended introduction and six chapters, the argument offers fresh considerations of Lewis's well-known Gothic works whilst also providing coverage of his more obscure published and unpublished texts. Based on extensive archival research undertaken in Britain, North America and the Caribbean, the book restores to critical focus a number of Lewis's works that have not previously been given scholarly attention. While drawing, where relevant, upon the biographical studies of earlier critics, the study remains first and foremost a literary history, and the first closely to situate this most prolific, versatile and influential of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British writers in relation to Gothic and Romantic literary culture more broadly.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Chronology of Matthew Gregory Lewis's Works
Introduction: Forgetting and Remembering Matthew Gregory Lewis
Chapter 1: The Author of The Monk
Chapter 2: The Accidental Provocateur
Chapter 3: The Original Dramatist
Chapter 4: The Adaptor and Translator
Chapter 5: The Poet, Balladeer and Writer of Shorter Tales
Chapter 6: The Slave-Owner
Select Bibliography
Index
