“Shocking”, “provocative”, “sensational” - such epithets have been accompanying critics’ reviews of the English writer Matthew Gregory Lewis’s novel “The Monk” for two centuries, which, upon its publication in the spring of 1796, overnight became a bestseller and the cause of a loud public scandal. The story of the Spanish Capuchin monk Ambrosio - the new Faust, the victim of the devil's machinations and the destroyer of other people's lives - brought the twenty-year-old author the controversial fame of an immoralist, an atheist and at the same time the creator of a Gothic tragedy novel that anticipated the plot collisions of romantic literature. This edition also includes a variety of stories that represent These include both the original creations of M. G. Lewis and his translations or adaptations of books by German authors. These fascinating works, in which the hand of a master is unmistakably discerned, are being translated into Russian for the first time. Also, for the first time in Russia, the texts are accompanied by numerous illustrations by English, American and French artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.