The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis pirate copy c1840

[London: W. Dugdale, c.1840] 
 
8vo., original brown publisher’s cloth, embossed with decorative borders in blind to covers and spine; lettered in gilt to the backstrip; yellow endpapers; pp [ii], 190; containing 23 in-text illustrations; boards with some small water and ink stains; a little bumped and frayed at spine ends; cracked at hinges, with some webbing showing, but holding firm; some pencil markings to front free endpaper and paste-down; internally lightly spotted throughout, with some corner creases and finger marks, some short nicks and closed tears to edges, some extending into text; one or two folded corners; a very good copy of an unusual edition. 
 
A bibliographically-interesting edition of Lewis’s principle work of gothic fiction, with no publisher’s date or imprint. W. Dugdale had published an edition of The Monk in 1840 which contained the same illustrations present here, and was bound from the original parts. It is likely that this copy, with continuous page numbering and duplicating these same illustrations, is a pirate copy of that same edition. This is further evidenced by the lack of one engraving, and the poor print quality. 
 
Dugdale was famously a printer, publisher, and bookseller of politically subversive publications and pornographic literature, and the illustrations contained here are indeed graphic in tone. The sensationalist and rather crude images include: 
 
The monk, Ambrosio, being lifted aloft by a demon clutching his scalp
Matilda baring her breast with one hand and raising a dagger with the other
Many portrayals of the couple embracing in secret
and
Elvira being smothered to death with a pillow 
 
Originally published anonymously by Lewis in 1796, The Monk proved particularly controversial for its graphic depictions of sexual desire. Combined with the fact that the core readership happened to be women, and for its subversive passages about the bible, the book was immediately banned upon publication, and was one of the reasons why Lewis was eventually forced to self-censor his work for the 4th edition.