Author: Dacre, Charlotte [Charlotte King][ (b. 1782)
Title: Tales of Helicon
Date: 1798
Biographical Information
Born in 1771 or 1772 with the given name Charlotte King, to father Johnathan King (born Jacob Rey) and mother Sara Lara, Charlotte died roughly fifty four years later in 1825. Her father began as a street trader in North Africa; then after anglicizing he became (Johnathan King and) an infamous moneylender. He became notorious for helping money-lenders get as high of a return rate as possible on their money, which was a criminal offense. Eventually his criminal activities landed him in court, accused of extorting money from the royals and the prime minister. Charlotte’s father was also a well-known radical political writer, which helped him acquire high connections with authors such as Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and William Godwin, who may have been inspirations for her later career. However, what is most likely her most effective inspiration came from her father’s abandonment and divorce of her mother in 1784, and his remarriage to Jane Isabella Butler. Her father’s cruel treatment and presumable unfaithfulness to her mother often figures as a theme in her writings. Charlotte herself had a rather scandalous affair with Nicholas Byrne, having three children with him, William (born in 1806), Charles (1807), and Mary (1809), before they married in 1815. She met Byrne at the Morning Post where she wrote verses under the name Rosa Matilda, while he was the Post’s editor.
In 1798 Charlotte and her sister, Sophia, wrote and published a collection of gothic poems, which they dedicated to their bankrupt father, titled Trifles of Helicon. Some of the poems this collection reappeared in her next collection of gothic poems titled Hours of Solitude (1805), confirming that Charlotte King was the new Charlotte Dacre. It is supposed she chose the name Dacre to lure people to her work in the belief that she had aristocratic ties. In the same year Charlotte published her novel, The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (1805), in which she explored gothic themes, including sexual misconduct. Following this theme in 1806 she published Zofloya, or, The Moor, which treats a strong heroine whose aggressive and sexual nature leads her down a dark and ominous path. With an extremely controversial pattern of sexual curiosity, Charlotte’s next novel, The Libertine (1807) followed suit. However, her last novel, The Passions (1811), is often now considered to be her way of warning her readers of the jeopardy and vulnerability in which they put themselves they chose to stray from the true virtuous path. Her last work, published in 1822, was George the Fourth, a poem.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/the-first-gothics-individual-authors/individual-authors/gothic-ballad-writers/dacre
https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/the-first-gothics-individual-authors/individual-authors/dacre
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-63519;jsessionid=3EA2A4DFA06C4C5C4EB4448614BFDC12
https://www.enotes.com/topics/charlotte-dacre
Prepared by Alexandria Ahlers-Prince, University of Nebraska, Spring 2018
© Alexandria Ahlers-Prince, 2018