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Charlotte Dacre

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Charlotte Dacre
Portrait for Hours of Solitude (1805)
Born17?[Note 1]
Died7 November 1825
Occupationauthor

Charlotte Dacre (17?[Note 1][1] – 7 November 1825), born Charlotte King, was a British Gothic novelist, and poet.[2][3] Most references today are given as Charlotte Dacre, but she first wrote under the pseudonym "Rosa Matilda" and later adopted a second pseudonym to confuse her critics. She became Charlotte Byrne upon her marriage to Nicholas Byrne in 1815.

Life

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Dacre was one of three legitimate children of John King, born Jacob Rey (c. 1753–1824), a Jewish moneylender of Portuguese Sephardic origin, who was also a blackmailer and a radical political writer well known in London society.[4] Her father divorced her mother, Sarah King (née Lara), under Jewish law in 1784, before setting up home with the dowager Countess of Lanesborough.[5] Dacre had a sister named Sophia, also a writer, and a brother named Charles.

Charlotte Dacre married Nicholas Byrne, a widower, on 1 July 1815. She already had three children with him: William Pitt Byrne (born 1806), Charles (born 1807) and Mary (born 1809).[2][6] He was an editor and future partner of London's The Morning Post newspaper where the author Mary Robinson was the poetry editor and an influence on a young Charlotte Dacre, who began her writing career by contributing poems to the Morning Post under the pseudonym "Rosa Matilda."

She died on 7 November 1825, in Lancaster Place, London, after a long and painful illness.[7]

Work

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Poem published in the Morning Herald, 29 September, 1803

In 1798 Charlotte King published with her sister Sophia a volume of Gothic verses, Trifles of Helicon, and dedicated it to her bankrupt father to show 'the education you have afforded us has not been totally lost'.[7] She used some of the poems from Trifles of Helicon in Hours of Solitude (1805), published under the pseudonym Charlotte Dacre, which confirms the identity between Dacre and King. She wrote verses for the Morning Post and Morning Herald under the name Rosa Matilda. Also in 1805 she published The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, a Gothic tale of sexual repression and misbehaviour. In the preface Dacre claims the book was written at the age of eighteen and left untouched for three years during journeys abroad.[7] She wrote a total of four novels: The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (1805), Zofloya, or the Moor (1806), The Libertine (1807), and The Passions (1811).

Of her four major novels, Zofloya, or the Moor is the most well-known and sold well on its release in 1806. It has been translated into German and French. The novel follows the corruption of the strong and sexually ruthless heroine Victoria, and her gradual enslavement to the charismatic Moorish servant Zofloya (later revealed to be Satan).[7]

Influence

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Despite all four of her novels being re-issued by Arno Press from 1972-1974,[8] Charlotte Dacre remained in virtual obscurity for nearly two centuries until the recovery of Zofloya in the 1990s by feminist scholars. Zofloya has since become a staple work of Gothic curriculum.[9] Her work was admired by some of the literary giants of her day and her novels influenced Percy Bysshe Shelley, who thought highly of her style and creative skills. Shelley's first two Gothic novels, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne were largely influenced by Zofloya.[10] She is believed to be one of the numerous targets of Lord Byron's satirical poem English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, mentioned in the lines:[2]

Far be't from me unkindly to upbraid
The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade,
Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind,
Leave wondering comprehension far behind.

Byron had been an early admirer of Dacre's poetry, and his first volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807) was largely inspired by Dacre's Hours of Solitude, including the allusion in the title. However, Byron turned his back on his early sentimental style of poetry after the scathing review he received for Hours of Idleness from The Edinburgh Review, leading to the satirical English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1809.[11]

Partial bibliography

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References

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  1. ^ Scrivener, Michael (2011). Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 232. doi:10.1057/9780230120020. ISBN 978-0-230-10289-7.
  2. ^ a b c Charlotte Dacre (10 July 2008). Kim Ian Michasiw (ed.). Zofloya: or The Moor (Oxford World's Classics). Oxford University Press. pp. xi–xii. ISBN 978-0-19-954973-3.
  3. ^ "Obituary". The Times. 9 November 1825. Mrs. Byrne, wife of Nicholas Byrne of the Morning Post [died] on Monday evening in Lancaster Place, after a long and painful illness
  4. ^ Rictor Norton, ed. (April 2005). Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764–1840. A&C Black. p. 141. ISBN 9780826485854.
  5. ^ Baines, Paul (October 2006). "Charlotte Byrne, née King, pseud. Charlotte Dacre (1782? – 1825), writer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63519. Retrieved 2 March 2011. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ "Charlotte Dacre c. 1772–1825?". enotes.com. Retrieved 1 March 2011.
  7. ^ a b c d "Byrne [née King], Charlotte [pseud. Charlotte Dacre] (1782?–1825), writer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63519. Retrieved 25 May 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ^ "Arno Press". Cambridge University Press.
  9. ^ L. Airey, Jennifer (2023). "Charlotte Dacre: The Passions: A Novel in Four Parts (1811)". Charlotte Dacre: The Passions: A Novel in Four Parts (1811). University of Wales Press. JSTOR 21995499.
  10. ^ Medwin, Thomas (1847). "The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley". Thomas Cautley Newby. pp. 30, 31.
  11. ^ Livingstone, Lee (2021). Lord Byron and women's writing (PDF) (PhD dissertation). Queen's University Belfast. p. 16.

Notes

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  1. ^ a b Dacre and her sister Sophia King's births weren't registered, and thus her year of birth has been disputed by scholars, ranging from 1771 to 1782. Dacre herself claimed to be 23 in her introduction notice in Hours of Solitude (1805). Upon her death in 1825 her age was listed as 53, however author Michael Henry Scrivener notes in Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840 that her husband Nicholas Byrne may have provided an older age to mask the fact he was two decades older than her
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