Born Charlotte Anne Waldie, Eaton began her writing career with a manuscript entitled "At Home and Abroad," which she temporarily abandoned after publishing a letter in the Monthly Magazine (vol. 2, 1814) addressing the similarities between her work in progress and Maria Edgeworth's novel Patronage. After visiting the Waterloo battlefield in 1815, Eaton authored Narrative of a Residence in Belgium, During the Campaign of 1815, and of a Visit to the Field of Waterloo. By an Englishwoman (1817). She spent the years 1816-1818 in Italy, thereafter producing the popular Rome in the Nineteenth Century (1820). Next published, Continental Adventures was issued anonymously in 1826. In 1831, after once again picking up her abandoned manuscript, she published At Home and Abroad. She also revised and republished Narrative of a Residence in Belgium as The Days of the Battle, or, Quatre Bras and Waterloo; by and Englishwoman Resident in Brussels in June 1815 (1853). In 1822 she married the banker Stephen Eaton (1780-1832). After Stephen Eaton's death, Charlotte Eaton continued to carry on the family banking business as a senior partner until her own death in 1859.