In 1779 Henry Lucas published Poems to her Majesty, together with a tragedy entitled The Earl of Somerset; the work was dedicated to Queen Charlotte. In the preface, he complained that the managers of the London theatres had rejected the play. A review in the Monthly Catalogue suggested that it was not the managers who were at fault but the people who had encouraged him to believe the play merited public exhibition, or alternatively that the author “has explained some good-natured expression of the critic’s with a latitude of interpretation which he never intended it should bear … the self-sufficiency of young authors will as often mistake those unavoidable compliments, which their own vanity may have extorted, for the genuine smiles of critical approbation”.