Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brand, Barbarina
BRAND, BARBARINA, Lady Dacre (1768–1854), poet and dramatist, was the third daughter of Admiral Sir Chaloner Ogle, bart., by Hester, youngest daughter and coheir of John Thomas, D.D., bishop of Winchester. She was married first to Valentine Henry Wilmot of Farnborough, Hampshire, an officer in the guards, and secondly, on 4 Dec. 1819, to Thomas Brand, twenty-first Lord Dacre, who died without issue on 21 March 1851. She died in Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, London, on 17 May 1854, in her eighty-seventh year.
Lady Dacre was one of the most accomplished women of her time. In 1821 her poetical works were privately printed in two octavo volumes, under the title of 'Dramas, Translations, and Occasional Poems.' Some of these are dated in the last century. They include four dramas, the first of which, 'Gonzalvo of Cordova,' was written in 1810. In the character of the great captain the author followed the novel of Monsieur de Florian. The next, 'Pedarias, a tragic drama,' was written in 1811; its story being derived from 'Les Incas' of Marmontel. Her third dramatic work was 'Ina,' a tragedy in five acts, the plot of which was laid in Saxon times in England. It was produced at Drury Lane 22 April 1815, under the management of Sheridan, to whose second wife, the daughter of Dr. Ogle, dean of Winchester, the author was related. It was not sufficiently successful to induce its repetition. It was printed in 1815, as produced on the stage, but in Lady Dacre's collected works she restored 'the original catastrophe, and some other parts which had been cut out.' The fourth drama is entitled 'Xarifa.' Lady Dacre's book contains also translations of several of the sonnets of Petrarch. Some of these had been privately printed at an earlier date in 1815(?), 1818, and 1819. In 1823, when Ugo Foscolo produced his 'Essays on Petrarch,' he dedicated them to Lady Dacre, and the last forty-five pages of the work are occupied by her ladyship's translations from Petrarch. Her 'Translations from the Italian,' principally from Petrarch, were privately printed at London in 1836, 8vo. In addition to her other accomplishments, Lady Dacre was an excellent amateur artist, and excelled in modelling animals, particularly the horse. She edited in 1831 'Recollections of a Chaperon,' and in 1835 'Tales of the Peerage and Peasantry,' both written by her only daughter, Mrs. Arabella Sullivan, wife of the Rev. Frederick Sullivan, vicar of Kimpton, Hertfordshire.
[Gent. Mag. N.S. xlii. 296; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Martin's Privately Printed Books, 276, 466; Quarterly Beview, xlix. 228, 231.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.35
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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