Résumé en anglais

This work features the lives and writings of two English sisters of the eighteenth century. Sophia and Harriet Lee were no ordinary novelists and no ordinary women of their time, hence the title of this work. They adapted their undoubted writing talents to the requirements of a new reading public, introducing new literary devices and techniques such as the twin plot and "in medias res beginning". Their writing was run in parallel with school teaching activities (a school which they themselves founded and ran). Their commercial thinking combined with the strength of some of the female characters in their novels served to promote the feminist cause which was beginning to take shape at that time.