Name Sophia Briscoe | Role Novelist | |
Sophia Briscoe (fl. 1770s) was an 18th-century English novelist. Little is known of her life.
Contents
Novels
Briscoe was the author of the epistolary novels Miss Melmoth; or the New Clarissa (1771) and The Fine Lady: A Novel (sometimes The Fine Lady; or a history of Mrs. Montague, 1772). Briscoe was paid 20 guineas for the copyright of The Fine Lady. A German translation of The Fine Lady appeared as Die Frau nach der Mode in Leipzig, dated 1771.
Both novels are available in print-on-demand editions. Miss Melmoth was well received in The Critical Review. The Monthly Review mildly commended it. The treatment of incest in Miss Melmoth (Caroline Melmoth shies away from marrying Sir John Evelin instinctively, before discovering their relationship) has been discussed along with other aspects by at least one modern critic.
Attribution
It has been speculated that The Sylph, a novel published in 1778 that was attributed to Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was written by Briscoe. A receipt at the British Library suggests that the publisher T. Lowndes paid Briscoe £12 for The Sylph, but it is thought more likely on stylistic grounds that Briscoe simply served as an intermediary between the Duchess and her publisher, so that Georgiana could retain her anonymity. The novel has its champions to this day.
Letter to Pitt?
Little further is known of Sophia Briscoe. It is not possible to say whether the person who wrote from Leyton, Essex, to William Pitt the Younger on 14 December 1797, on the subject of taxation, was the novelist or a namesake.