The Anaconda by Matthew G. Lewis, Fiction, Horror (Wildside Fantasy Classic)

"Horror in literature attains a new malignity in the work of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1773-1818), whose novel The Monk (1796) achieved marvelous popularity and earned him the nickname 'Monk' Lewis. This young author, educated in Germany and saturated with a body of wild Teuton lore unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, turned to terror in forms more violent than his gentle predecessor had ever dared to think of; and produced as a result a masterpiece of active nightmare whose general Gothic cast is spiced with added stores of ghoulishness. -- H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror In Literature"