Sophia Lee (1) (1750–1824)

Sophia Lee and her younger sister Harriet were born in London into a theatrical family, daughters of the actor John Lee and his wife Margaret. Sophia helped raise her younger siblings after the death of their mother in 1770. She started her writing career with a play called The Chapter of Accidents (1780) that was influenced by Diderot's comedy Le pere de famille. It proved extremely popular and after being initially staged at the Haymarket Theatre, it went on to have a run at both the Drury Lane Theatre and Covent Garden. The play was performed throughout the 18th-century in England, and was translated into French and German. Because of its popularity, Sophia had profits to invest in a school for young ladies at the handsome Belvidere House in Bath, which she ran with Harriet. The school had an excellent reputation and it flourished for more than 20 years. The school proved particularly successful and it's likely that the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, who grew up in Bath, attended the school; she later became a friend of Sophia Lee. Among the other pupils was Mrs. Siddons's youngest daughter, Cecilia. Sophia Lee also wrote the historical novel The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times (1783–1785). She and Harriet later co-authored The Canterbury Tales (1797–1805). In her preface to the revised 1832 edition, Harriet called the tales "gossiping long stories" and they can be viewed now as a precursor to the modern short story. Sophia Lee's last work was the novel Ormond; or the Debauchee (1810). She closed the school in 1803 and went to live first near Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, and then in the village of Clifton, near Bristol, where she died.