A revered abbot of Madrid, famous for never having sinned, is approached by a novice who is not what he seems. Lewis was nineteen and a junior diplomat when he wrote it in ten weeks; the book made him notorious, forced a bowdlerised second edition, and drew a public attack from Coleridge, who called it a poison for youth. It is the most extreme thing the Gothic ever produced, and the Inquisition arrives before the end.