She began acting at the age of seventeen in breeches roles, and took to wearing male clothing off stage as well, performing and being publicly known as "Charles Brown" from 1741.

After being unsuccessful in a series of jobs associated with men at the time, such as valet, sausage maker, farmer, and tavern owner, she succeeded in her career as a writer and continued her work as a novelist and memoirist until her death in 1760.

Her father was actor, playwright, and poet laureate Colley Cibber, and her mother was musician and actress Katherine Shore.

Since her father was often absent due to business endeavors and her mother was frequently sick, Charke became independent at a young age.

Between 1719 and 1721, she attended Mrs. Draper's School for Girls in Park Street, Westminster, where she studied the liberal arts, Latin, Italian, and geography.

[2] She suggested that her identification with the male gender began early in her life, and recalled impersonating her father as a small child.

[2] On April 8, 1730, at the age of seventeen, Charke made her stage debut at Drury Lane in The Provok'd Wife, by John Vanbrugh, playing the stereotypically ultra-feminine minor role of Mademoiselle.

Theophilus, who likely knew of the scheme, used the opportunity of new leadership without his father to make greater demands of the theatre and organized an actors' revolt.

Charke's antagonistic relationship with both of London's government-recognized patent theatres meant that she would have great difficulty finding legitimate employment as an actress.

Charke had become estranged from her husband Richard, who had remained with the acting company at Drury Lane, upset by his costly gambling habits and frequent affairs.

In 1737, he fled to Jamaica to escape his debts, and died shortly afterward, leaving Charke a single mother, with no income and a strained relationship with her powerful father.

Her father remained furious with her for the Drury Lane actors' revolt, as well as her unflattering impression of him in Pasquin, which had been conceived by his old enemy Fielding.

Charke received some financial support from fellow actors, and when she was eventually arrested and imprisoned for her debt, coffee-house keepers and prostitutes from Covent Garden banded together to pay her bail.

[2][3] After being invited to tea by the heiress, Charke ultimately revealed her true gender to the suitor, who was "absolutely struck speechless for some little Time.

She continued to work as a man and served as a sausage maker as well as a valet to Richard Annesley, the sixth Earl of Anglesey.

(Anglesey was soon a significant party to an infamous scandal after a court discovered he had sold James Annesley, with a strong claim to the inheritance, into slavery.

In 1742, Charke joined a new acting company in the New Theatre in St. James's and produced her second play, Tit for Tat, or, Comedy and Tragedy at War.

In the flush of early success, she borrowed money from her uncle and opened the Charlotte Charke Tavern in Drury Lane.

The show was held by John Russell, who recognized her abilities as a comic performer and a proven manipulator of complex stringed marionettes.

After one short season, the theatre's founder was arrested for debts and imprisoned in Newgate Prison, where he went mad and eventually died.

Charke attempted to buy the theatre's puppets from Russell's landlord, but she could not meet his asking price, and the little company passed out of existence.

During these peripatetic years, Charke was once imprisoned alongside men as a vagabond actor, worked as a male pastry chef, and set herself up as a farmer.

She died later that year at her lodgings in Haymarket, London, with only the remembrance of being "the celebrated Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Daughter of the late Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureat; a Gentlewoman remarkable for her Adventures and Misfortunes.

In 1754, Charke wrote her first novel, The History of Mr. Henry Dumont, Esq; and Miss Charlotte Evelyn[6] and sold it for only ten guineas.

She began writing her autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke[2] which was published in well-received installments and then as two full editions.

Henry Fielding specifically produced plays, including Eurydice Hiss'd and The Historical Register featuring women in disguise with Charke as a leading actor.

On the outside, Charke was seen as a happy, comedic writer, when in reality, she struggled financially and emotionally, ultimately forcing her into writing as a career.

[citation needed] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states "her self-representation had already contributed significantly to the development of psychological introspection in the emerging genre of the novel.

"Charlotte Charke and the Liminality of Bi-Genderings: A Study of Her Canonical Works" by Polly S. Fields from Pilgrimage for Love: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of Josephine A. Roberts.