Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 6 December 1813: "Redde a good deal, but desultorily ... It is odd that when I do read, I can only bear the chicken broth of - any thing but Novels. It is many a year since I looked into one, (though they are sometimes ordered, by way of experiment, but never taken) till I looked yesterday at the worst parts of the Monk. These descriptions .. are forced - the philtred ideas of a jaded voluptuary."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
?The most extraordinary production of this period was the powerful and wicked romance of The Monk.?
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
'The evening until one was [frittered?] away in reading the 'Monk' for the fourth time at least.... In the second volume are some beautiful lines that often delights one ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'On Monday the 30th we went in the coach with... Mr Norman, with whom we dined at the Bolt & Tun, where John & I spent the evening & slept, in the course of which evening I began reading the popular novel of the "Monk".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'For three years I continued a regular subscriber to the circulating library, during which time I read various works, including Milton's, Shakespeare's, Sterne's, Dr Johnson's, and many others. It was a usual practice for me to sit up to read after the family had retired for the night. I remember it was on one of these occasions that I read Lewis's "Monk". On rising from my seat to go to bed, I was so impressed with dongeon horror, that I took the candle and stole up stairs, not daring to look either right or left, lest some Lady Angela should plunge a dagger into me!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
'Shelley draws & Mary reads the monk all evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'The other night I sat up till four o'clock, reading Matthew Lewis's "Monk". It is the most stupid & villainous novel that I have read for a great while. Considerable portions of it are grossly indecent[,] not to say brutish - one does not care a straw about one of the characters - and tho' "little Mat" has legions of ghosts & devils at his bidding - one views their movements with profound indifference.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
'Thursday Sept. 22nd. [...] Return [from walking] at [...] 4. Read Greek [...] Sit up till one
reading the Monk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday Sept. 23rd. Finish the Monk [...] Buy a Greek Anacreon [...] Read Greek [...] Shelley
reads Thalaba aloud in the evening. Write a little Gre[ek] & learn four tenses of the Verb to
strike'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud
Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'This evening I have been reading a good deal in the "Monk". I don't know whether it hurts the mind or not, it certainly shows the passions in a very fascinating light. I think we are more apt to be impressed with that part than the morality of it. I think it loss of time and ... I should not go on reading it, but yet as I have begun it I think it better to go on.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: 'I have now read the Monk — & admire the delicacy of Lewis in criticising the Bible. there is genius in the book — but no good can possibly be produced by it. I would not have men distrust themselves...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
