Matthew "the monk" Lewis was the son of a diplomat and followed in his father's footsteps, but when he was stationed at The Hague (the third largest city in Holland), he was b-o-r-e-d out of his mind. His only friends were French nobility who had escaped the violence of the French Revolution and spent their time at the local pubs. So what's a guy with a lot of time and little work to do? Write a Gothic novel! And he did. In 1796. Over the course of ten weeks. Before his 20th birthday.

Yowza.

The Monk

The Monk was Lewis's micro-NaNoWriMo success. Before we get into it, you need to know that it's long—really long. Now, this shouldn't come as a surprise since most 18th-century novels, regardless of their genre, could double as bricks, but it bears remembering considering his writing time table.

Beyond its length, The Monk's plot is one of the most complicated. Complicated and bloody and raunchy. Many Gothic novels have some sexually-charged plot lines, but this takes the cake. You've got a pregnant nun who's violently murdered and a monk who has an affair with a demon-witch and then makes an unofficial pact with the devil in order to rape and murder—super spoiler alert—his sister. Très ew.

The Castle Spectre

About a year after his novel debut, Lewis penned this Gothic play, and it had a pretty long run, with performances occurring even up until the 1820s. This particular play was less significant for its plot than for its staging: it was the first Gothic play that sported a ghost onstage. Apparently, casting a walking-talking ghost accompanied by special effects (musical accompaniment and extra candles) crossed some lines of decorum for an audience who expected ghosts to be either unseen or more solemn. In any case, it was a roaring success.

Chew on This

So you've got a lurid tale hastily churned out in a mere ten weeks? What about a carefully crafted Gothic tale that takes every teeny tiny iota into consideration? Which takes more work: the potentially sloppy several-hundred-pager or Poe's meticulously produced short story?

Matty G. Lewis was nearing the end of his teens when he scrawled out The Monk, so it comes as no surprise that teens of today still gobble up contemporary versions of Gothic YA lit. What have the novels of today done better than their predecessors? What might be missing from a book like Beautiful Creatures?