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Author: Dallas, Robert Charles

Biography:

Dallas, Robert Charles (1754-1824: WBIS)

Dallas was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of Robert Dallas, MD, and Sarah (Cormack) Hewitt, who married in 1769 after the death of her first husband. He went to school in Scotland and then entered the Inner Temple, but returned to Jamaica when he inherited his father's estate. He married Sarah Harding in England; on finding that her health suffered from the climate in the West Indies, however, the couple went to live in France, then in America, and finally returned to England, where Dallas pursued a career as a prolific writer in several popular genres--novels, poems, plays, translations, and histories. Indirectly related to Byron (his sister married Byron's uncle), he was able to offer the younger poet encouragement and advice before he (Byron) became famous. Dallas's plans to publish a memoir of Byron together with selections from their correspondence were thwarted in England by Byron's executors, but the book was edited by Dallas's son Alexander Robert Charles Dallas (q.v.) and published in France shortly after the author's death in Normandy in November 1824. He is not to be confused with Robert Charles Dallas (1804-74), son of Sir George Dallas. (ODNB 3 July 2018; Wikipedia 3 July 2018; Allibone)

 

Other Names:

  • R. C. Dallas
 

Books written (3):

London: R. Ryan, J. Miller, and W. and J. Lowndes, 1818