Dacre was one of three legitimate children of John King, born Jacob Rey (c. 1753–1824), a Jewish moneylender of Portuguese Sephardic origin, who was also a blackmailer and a radical political writer well known in London society.

[4] Her father divorced her mother, Sarah King (née Lara), under Jewish law in 1784, before setting up home with the dowager Countess of Lanesborough.

[7] In 1798 Charlotte King published with her sister Sophia a volume of Gothic verses, Trifles of Helicon, and dedicated it to her bankrupt father to show 'the education you have afforded us has not been totally lost'.

The novel follows the corruption of the strong and sexually ruthless heroine Victoria, and her gradual enslavement to the charismatic Moorish servant Zofloya (later revealed to be Satan).

Yet her work was admired by some of the literary giants of her day and her novels influenced Percy Bysshe Shelley, who thought highly of her style and creative skills.