Mary Leapor

Stephen Van-Hagen (University of Coventry)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

Born 26 Feb 1722
Died 12 Nov 1746
Activity 1742-1746

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Leapor's Works

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Mary Leapor was born on 26 February 1722 in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire, the daughter of Philip Leapor (1693-1771), a gardener, and his wife Ann (née Sharman, d. 1741). Her father worked as a gardener to Sir John Blencowe, a former M. P. for Brackley, Baron of the Exchequer and Justice of Pleas, until Blencowe’s death in 1726. Thereafter he opened a nursery garden in Brackley. Evidence suggests that both he, and Ann Sharman’s family, were literate. Partly self-educated, Leapor probably received a rudimentary education at either a local Dame School, or at the Free School in Brackley on the south side of the chapel belonging to Magdalen College. She began writing young – it has been widely recorded that she could write “tolerably” at the age of ten or eleven, that her…

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7691 words

Citation: Van-Hagen, Stephen. "Mary Leapor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 March 2007; last revised 10 March 2022. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2658, accessed 22 November 2024.]