Harriet Lee

Harriet Lee (1757, London - 1 August 1851, Clifton, England) was a novelist and playwright.

Born the daughter of actor John Lee, Harriet Lee grew up in an artistic family. In 1786 she published The Errors of Innocence, an epistolary novel. In 1797 she completed another novel, Clara Lennox, and that same year she published the first volume of a collection of twelve stories, Canterbury Tales (completed in 1805). Her sister, Sophia Lee (1750–1824), also a successful author and dramatist, contributed two episodes to the first volume of this lengthy project. One episode, Kruitzner, was dramatized by Lord Byron in 1821 under the title of Werner, or the Inheritance. Harriet Lee then wrote it as a play, re-titled The Three Strangers; it debuted at London's Covent Garden in 1825.

After the death of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin pursued Lee, then 41, impressed by her wit. The two corresponded for several months during 1798, in which Harriet rebuked him several times for his egotism. When Godwin visited her to make a formal proposal, she rejected him, citing their different philosophies and religious beliefs. She and her sisters opened a school at Belvedere House in the city of Bath where they became friends with novelist Ann Radcliffe. She spent her final years in the village of Clifton in Bristol.

Harriet Lee lived to be 94. She died in Clifton in 1851 and was interred in the Church cemetery there, with her sisters.