SOURCE: Summers, Rev. Montague. “Byron's ‘Lovely Rosa.’” In Essays In Petto, 57-73. London: The Fortune Press, 1928.

In the following excerpt, the foremost Gothic scholar of the early twentieth century offers a general overview of Dacre's oeuvre.

Far be't from me unkindly to upbraid The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade, Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind, Leave wondering comprehension far behind. 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1809, ll. 519-522.

The orthodox note on the above passage runs thus: “The lovely little Jessica, the daughter of the noted Jew K———, seems to be a follower of the Della Crusca School, and has published two volumes of very respectable absurdities in rhyme, as times go; besides sundry novels in the style of the first edition of the Monk.” Coleridge, in his edition of Byron (I., p. 357), gives us an additional sentence: “She has since married the Morning Post—an exceeding...