From the official documents available within a reasonable time frame and area of her (limited) known life, it appears that Sophia Briscoe was ‘independent’ in her profession, born in ‘Came County’ and was put on record at age 40.
The next debated record of Briscoe may be one regarding her death, listed in the London Gazette’s Royal Assurance Office on October 5, 1826, at St. Giles’ in Reading, Berkshire.
[5] A German translation of The Fine Lady appeared as Die Frau nach der Mode in Leipzig, dated 1771.
[8] In the twentieth century, Briscoe came to the attention of new readers: she was listed in Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (1986) and 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 contemporary critic.
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.