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Saglia, Diego. 'Sophia Lee (1750-1824).' British Women Playwrights around 1800. 1 December 1999. 4 pars. <http://www.etang.umontreal.ca/bwp1800/essays/saglia_queen_lee.html>
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Copyright © Contributor, 1999-2008. This essay
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| 1. |
Born in London, Sophia Lee was the daughter of the actor John Lee, and sister
of the novelist Harriet Lee. Her father had worked under Garrick
at Drury Lane from 1747 to 1749 when he moved to Covent Garden.
As Sophia's mother died early, the girl had to look after her
younger siblings. When still young she wrote a three-act opera, The Chapter of Accidents, which was rejected by the manager of Covent Garden but was eventually accepted
by Colman the Elder, the manager of the Haymarket Theatre,
who also asked Lee to extend it into a five-act comedy. The
play was staged on 5 August 1780 and was an immediate success.
After John Lee died in 1781, Sophia used the money which she
had received from the play in order to open a school for young
ladies at Belvedere House in Bath, where she went to live with
her sisters Anne and Harriet. The school proved particularly
successful and, among their pupils, the Lee sisters also had
Mrs Siddons's youngest daughter Cecilia.
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| 2. |
In 1785 Sophia Lee published The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times. This 'historical tale' was well received and praised by Sheridan and his wife
Elizabeth Linley, herself from Bath, and by Ann Ward, afterwards
Mrs Radcliffe, who also resided in Bath in this period and
was acquainted with the Miss Lees. The novel is a three-volume
imaginative story about the twin daughters of Mary Queen of
Scots, born of a secret marriage. For this book Lee received
50 pounds, together with the copyright fee, from her publisher
Cadell. |
| 3. |
In 1787 she published a long ballad 'The Hermit's Tale'. Later, her blank verse
tragedy Almeyda, Queen of Granada opened at Drury Lane on 20 April 1796. Mrs Siddons, the dedicatee of the published
text and a personal friend of Lee's, played the title role.
Her brothers Charles and John Philip Kemble were also in
the cast. The play, however, was not successful and ran only
four nights. Sophia then contributed two episodes to the
first volume of the Canterbury Tales (1797-1805), written together with Harriet, 'The Young Lady's Tale' and 'The
Clergyman's Tale'.
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| 4. |
In March 1798 the Lee sisters received repeated visits from William Godwin, who
had come to Bath especially to lay siege to Harriet whom he
intended to marry. Yet the latter rejected his suit because
of their differing ideas on religion. Their social life in
Bath was very active and in these years they made the acquaintance
of General Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican leader, Mrs Piozzi
and Sir Thomas Lawrence, among others. Sophia Lee eventually
gave up the school in 1803. In 1804 she published the six volumes
of The Life of a Lover, and a comedy The Assignation was staged unsuccessfully at Drury Lane on 28 January 1807. Her last work was
the triple-decker novel Ormond; or the Debauchee (1810). On leaving Bath, she went to live near Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire
first, and then at the village of Clifton, near Bristol, where
she died on 13 March 1824. She is buried in Clifton Church. |
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Diego Saglia
Universitat di Parma
Diego Saglia teaches English literature at the Universitat di Parma, Italy. He
specializes on literature of the Romantic period, especially
poetry, and has published on women's verse, the Gothic novel,
several aspects of Hispanic exoticism in British Romantic
poetry, the annotated poem in the Romantic period. He has
written two books: Byron and Spain (1996) and Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia (2000). |
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