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Birth Date

1722

First Name

Mary

Last Name

Leapor

Bibliography

Radcliffe; Blunden 1936; Hold, 97-103; Christmas, 22, 161-83; Fullard, 560; Greene 1993; Keegan (2003); Lonsdale (1989), 194-217; Milne 1999, 29-59; Reynolds 1920; Rizzo, 242-3, 249-54; Rowton, 132-5; Shiach, 54-6; Backscheider, 407; Backscheider & Ingrassia, 877/ [---Iain Rowley]

Biographical Text

born in Marston St Lawrence, Northants, on the estate of Judge Blencowe, where her father, Philip, worked as a gardener. At age 5 Mary Leapor and her family moved to Brackley, where her father maintained a nursery and worked for local landowners. She was taught to read and write by her parents, but they disapproved of her penchant for scribbling verses when she was 10 or 11. Leapor laboured as her father's housekeeper after her mother's passing in 1742, but continued to write. The local circulation of Leapor’s verses drew the notice of Bridget Freemantle—daughter of a former rector of Hinton—who was moved to raise a subscription that would accord her more time for writing. However, Leapor died of measles before her only book, Poems upon Several Occasions (1748), was published. Sixteen or seventeen volumes, including part of Pope’s works and Dryden’s Fables were present in her library at the time of her death, but the couplets in which she devised religious verse, moral epistles, fables and epitaphs are typically of a less acerbic quality than Pope’s. Affirmed in the public consciousness as an embodiment of the untutored poet denied the advantages of artistic cultivation, Leapor’s work was widely appreciated following her death. In 1791, William Cowper indicated of another ‘natural’ poet that he had not observed such talent in any disadvantaged poet since Mary Leapor.

Occupation

housekeeper

Death Date

1751

Publications

Poems Upon Several Occasions, by Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire (London: J. Roberts, 1748). [Volume 1, ed. Ralph Griffiths.] Poems Upon Several Occasions, by the late Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire (London: J. Roberts, 1751). ‘The Second and Last Volume’ [Ed. Samuel Richardson and Isaac Hawkins Browne]; The Works of Mary Leapor: A Critical Edition, ed. Richard Greene and Ann Messenger (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003)

OED DNB

Yes

Leapor Mary

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