| British novelist (pseud. "Rosa Matilda") best known for Zofloya; or The Moor, a hugely popular Gothic novel published in 1806. Too long overlooked by readers and scholars, Zofloya is finally getting some of the attention it deserves. Dacre's over-the-top style and depictions of aggressive women challenge numerous assumptions about the "female Gothic," and make this work an important one. As a recent publisher's blurb has it: "A Gothic tale of lust, betrayal and multiple murder set in fifteenth-century Venice, the novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of the central character, Victoria's, intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, Zofloya deserves to be read alongside other established Gothic classics." (from the recent Oxford UP edition) | |