Dacre, Charlotte (c. 1772–1825)

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Dacre, Charlotte (c. 1772–1825)

British Gothic-fiction writer. Name variations: Charlotte Byrne; Charlotte King; (pseudonym) Rosa Matilda. Born Charlotte King, c. 1772 (some sources cite c. 1781 or c. 1782), in England; died Nov 7, 1825 (some sources cite c. 1841), in London, England; the name Dacre was itself a pseudonym; dau. of Jonathan King (notorious London moneylender) and Deborah Lara King; sister of Sophia King Fortnum (writer); m. Nicholas Byrne, 1806; children: 3.

Wrote Trifles of Helicon with Sophia King (1798); as Rosa Matilda, published Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (1805); also wrote Hours of Solitude (1805), The Libertine (1807), The Passions (1811), George the Fourth (1822) and School for Friends, or Domestic Tale; probably best known for Zofloya; or the Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century (1806), a feminized version of Gothic novelist Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk, which was immensely popular and praised by Shelley and Swinburne.