Mary Leapor

The daughter of gardener, Mary Leapor worked for a time as a cook-maid. Her verses attracted the patronage of Bridget Freemantle, though the poet died of measles before a planned volume of poems could appear. Leapor's adventurous poems were admired enough to support a second posthumous volume, and several were reprinted in nineteenth-century anthologies.

TEXT RECORDS:

1746 ca.Cicely, Joan, and Deborah: an Eclogue.
1746 ca.Colinetta.
1746 ca.The Charms of Anthony.
1746 ca.The Fields of Melancholy and Chearfulness.
1746 ca.The Month of August.
1746 ca.The Temple of Love.

PUBLICATIONS:

Poems upon several occasions. 1748.
Poems upon several occasions. The second volume. 1751.

PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:

English
Anglican

no formal education

laborer
woman writer
poet

REFERENCE:

DNB; not NCBEL; DLB.

Bridget Freemantle, memoir in Leapor, Poems (1751); "Account of Mrs. Leapor" [from Poems] London Magazine 20 (July 1751) 311-15; George Coleman and Bonnell Thornton, Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755); Biographia Dramatica (1782; 1812); John Duncombe, "Molly Leapor" Gentleman's Magazine 54 (1784) 806-07; William Hayley, in Life of Cowper (1803); Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets (1807); Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); Alexander Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses (1827); Frederic Rowton, Female Poets of Great Britain (1853); Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record (1855); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Fairchild, in Religious Trends in English Poetry (1939); Betty Rizzo, "Christopher Smart, the 'C. S.' Poems, and Molly Leapor's Epitaph" The Library, S6 5 (1983) 22-31; Todd, Dictionary of ... Women Writers 1660-1800 (1987); Lonsdale, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (1989); Richard Green, Mary Leapor: a Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry (1993); Bridget Keegan, in Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets (2003).

COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Mary Leapor:

1.	1751  Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 8 May 1751; Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, ed. Barbauld (1804) 3:24.
2.	1751  Anonymous, "To the Inspector" in London Advertiser (4 April 1751).
3.	1751  Anonymous, "Sonnet on the late Mrs. Leapor" Magazine of Magazines 2 (April 1751) 371.
4.	1754  John Duncombe, in The Feminiad (1754) 20-21 & n.
5.	1755  Anonymous, "Occasioned by reading an excellent Miscellany lately published, entitled, Poems by eminent Ladies" London Magazine 24 (Appendix, 1755) 626.
6.	1784  John Duncombe, "Molly Leapor" Gentleman's Magazine 54 (1784) 806-07.
7.	1806  Robert Southey to G. C. Bedford, 22 March 1806; New Letters, ed. Currey (1965) 1:417.
8.	1807  Robert Southey, in Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807) 2:91.
9.	1827 ca.  Anonymous, in Blackwood's Magazine, 1827 ca.; Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882) 1:1072.
10.	1827  Alexander Dyce, in Specimens of British Poetesses, selected and chronologically arranged (1827) 170.
11.	1828  Leigh Hunt, in Review of Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses; The Companion (11 June 1828) 334.
12.	1855  Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women (1852; 1855) 389.

BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Mary Leapor:

1.	1748  Anonymous, "To the Reader" in Leapor, Poems (1748) Sig. A2-A2v.
2.	1749  Bridget Freemantle, Memoir in Leapor, Poems (1751) xvi-xxxii.
3.	1755  George Coleman and Bonnell Thornton, Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755) 2:16.
4.	1782  Isaac Reed, in Biographia Dramatica; or, A Companion to the Playhouse (1782) 1:278-79.
5.	1812  Alexander Chalmers, in General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17) 20:110-11.
6.	1827  Alexander Dyce, in British Poetesses (1827) 171.
7.	1853  Frederic Rowton, in Female Poets of Great Britain (1853) 132.