Zofloya or, The Moor: 'Her proud rage subsided, her eyes were cast on the earth''

Charlotte King was born in either 1771 or 1772 to John King (himself born as Jacob Rey), a moneylender and radical writer. Her father divorced her mother, Sara, under Jewish law in 1784 and set up home with the dowager countess of Lanesborough.

Little is known of Charlotte’s early decades.

Charlotte met and began to live with Nicholas Byrne, a widower, in the early 1800’s. Byrne was an editor and eventual partner of London's The Morning Post. The poetry editor there was the esteemed poet and ...