Charlotte Dacre

Who was Charlotte Dacre?

Charlotte Dacre was an English author of Gothic novels.

Most references to her today are under the name Charlotte Dacre, but she first wrote under the pseudonym Rosa Matilda, and later adopted a second pseudonym to tease and confuse her critics. Charlotte Dacre was born Charlotte King, and later became Mrs Byrne upon her marriage to Nicholas Byrne.

She was the daughter of John King, born Jacob Rey, a moneylender and radical writer well known in London society. Her father divorced her mother, Sara, née Lara, under Jewish law in 1784 before setting up home with the dowager countess of Lanesborough. She had a sister named Sophia.

Charlotte Dacre married Nicholas Byrne, a widower, on 1 July 1815. She already had three children with him: William Pitt Byrne, Charles and Mary. 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."

As a romance novelist, Dacre cast heroines in a way quite different from the norm of the early 19th century that called for ladies of decorum and good taste. Her style was more like that of the male authors of her era, creating aggressive and often physically violent female characters who demonstrate powerful sexual desires and ambition. Dacre usually constructed this behaviour in a way that can be at least in part justified by the actions of others.