Sophia Lee

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Standard Name: Lee, Sophia
Birth Name: Sophia Priscilla Lee
SL 's other writings, both dramatic and novelistic, are overshadowed by the fame of her novel The Recess.
Oval, head-and-shoulders stipple engraving of Sophia Lee by William Ridley after Sir Thomas Lawrence, published 1797. She is wearing a tall, turban-style white cap over her curled and powdered hair, and a layered cloak over a pale, tightly-laced bodice with a kerchief reaching to her throat and fastened with a bow. Her name ("Miss Lee") is written below.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Mary Russell Mitford
MRM was said to have learned to read by the time she was three. In January 1806 she got through fifty-five volumes, including books by Sarah Harriet Burney , Maria Edgeworth , Elizabeth Hamilton ,...
Family and Intimate relationships Harriet Lee
Charlotte, eldest sister of Sophia and HL , created a local scandal by marrying a man whom they considered her social inferior.
Lee, Sophia. “Introduction”. The Recess, edited by April Alliston, University Press of Kentucky, 2000, p. ix - lii.
xxxiii, xlvii
Family and Intimate relationships Harriet Lee
HL 's mother, Anna Sophia Lee , pursued her own career as an actress.
(Further information about her and about Harriet's father is given in Sophia Lee 's entry.)
Family and Intimate relationships Harriet Lee
Her elder sister Sophia , in addition to taking a major role in running the family, became a schoolmistress, playwright, and novelist , as did Harriet.
Fictionalization Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen...
Friends, Associates Queen Elizabeth I
The flight of Mary, Queen of Scots from her own country in May 1568 into Elizabeth's domain caused the English queen much heart-burning. Mary (Elizabeth's cousin) was an obvious pretender to the throne, representing the...
Friends, Associates Hester Lynch Piozzi
While visiting Bath, HLP met Sophia and Harriet Lee .
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press, 1987.
312
Friends, Associates Anna Maria Porter
There they are reported as being neighbours and friends of another pair of literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Harriet Lee
Friends, Associates Charlotte Smith
CS and Sarah Rose developed a highly personal epistolary relationship from January 1804, though they never met. Sarah's husband, Samuel Rose , was a solicitor involved in attempts to settle the Smith trust. The Roses...
Instructor Ann Radcliffe
It is often said that AR attended the school run by Sophia and Harriet Lee and their sisters (of whom she was later a friend or acquaintance) in Bath. But no evidence supports the...
Intertextuality and Influence Agnes Strickland
Her historical romance The Pilgrims of Walsingham, 1835, is written on the Canterbury Tales model (as practised originally by Chaucer and more recently by Harriet Lee and her sister ). AS 's pilgrims who...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Deverell
In a prologue MD jokes about her own daring to judge Queen Elizabeth. Her language is formal and stilted, but she has a strong dramatic grasp of the complex and shifting feelings of Mary and...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Yearsley
After her deliberately egotistical preface AY erases herself to present her novel as a manuscript written by her male protagonist, Henry, imprisoned in a castle on an island; his tale begins during the night of...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Yonge
In its narration of this particular variant on historical fact (a fictional daughter born to Mary and Bothwell), the novel recalls Sophia Lee 's The Recess.
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Green
This novel, a third-person narrative, opens arrestingly—It was a cold, and dreary evening, in the month of October 1548
Green, Sarah. The Royal Exile; or, Victims of Human Passions: An Historical Romance of the Sixteenth Century. J. J. Stockdale, 1811.
1: 1
—on the French Count d'Almaile's discovery of a female skeleton in her coffin...

Timeline

July 1567
Mary Queen of Scots miscarried of twins—or, according to an unsubstantiated rumour, bore a live daughter who was despatched to a French convent.
9-27 July 1575
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester , favourite of Queen Elizabeth , threw a particularly magnificent entertainment for her at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.
17 March 1677
Nathaniel Lee 's tragedyThe Rival Queens opened on stage.
1 February 1759
William Robertson published at London his History of Scotland (which became a source for The Recess by Sophia Lee ).
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
1801
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller 's tragedyMaria Stuart, first produced the previous year, was printed in J. C. Mellish 's English translation as Mary Stuart.