Matthew Gregory Lewis

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818), known as “Monk” Lewis, was an English novelist, playwright and poet, born in London. His Gothic novel The Monk (1796) made him famous, and he wrote plays and the ballad collections Tales of Wonder and Tales of Terror.

He was an early friend of Walter Scott, to whose Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border he contributed a ballad, and he died of yellow fever at sea in 1818 on a voyage home from his Jamaican estates.