Lee, Sophia

1750 - 13 March 1824

British novelist, poet, and playwright best-known now for The Recess; or, A Tale of Other Times (1783-85), a quasi-Gothic (or is it fully Gothic?) novel full of political and personal intrigue (involving among others Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth), subterranean imprisonment, female persecution, betrayal, and desire. Sounds fully Gothic to me.... and let's not overlook its influence on Ann Radcliffe and Sir Walter Scott. (Interesting side note here: Sophia Lee and her sisters ran a highly regarded school in Bath, one which, some scholars have speculated, the young Ann Radcliffe may have attended, although Radcliffe's most authoritative biographer, Rictor Norton, discounts that as highly unlikely.)

Sites:
Sophia Lee site
Brief biographical note [Diego Saglia]
Biographical note
[1911 Encyclopedia]
Sophia Lee
This site includes a biographical note (actually an 1824 obituary that discusses her father more than Lee herself), a biographical sketch from 1797, another brief obituary from Blackwood's, and a number of reviews of her works The Canterbury Tales and Life of a Lover. [Corvey Women Writers on the Web, Sheffield Hallam U]
Brief note
[Gothic Labyrinth]
Brief biographical note
[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]


Etexts:
Almeyda; Queen of Granada. A Tragedy. In Five Acts [1796]
- at Diego Saglia's site [U Parma]

The Recess
Not currently available online; here's the publisher's blurb for the edition to the right:
  click for more info from amazon.com
click the cover image for more info from amazon.com
"Sophia Lee."