Mary Leapor was an English poet, born in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire, the only child of Anne Sharman and Philip Leapor, a gardener. She, out of the many labouring-class writers of the perio
Title page, Poems Upon Several Occasions (1748) by Mary Leapor
The Mary Leapor window in Brackley Town Hall
The Mary Leapor Memorial in the Lady Chapel of St Peter's Church Brackley
Mary Leapor, Poems Upon Several Occasions, Vols 1 & 2, first editions, conserved by Christopher Shaw
John Duncombe published his "canon-forming" celebration of British women writers as The Feminiad in 1754, though the title was revised as The Feminead in the second, 1757 edition.
Mary Leapor
…among the subscribers. These volumes secured Leapor's reputation as "one of the most interesting of the natural poets." John Duncombe praised her in The Feminead (1754), and Bonnell Thornton and George Colman included her in their Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755). Leapor herself seems not to have welcomed her…
Title page of John Duncombe's The Feminead (1754), 2nd edition (1757)(Google Books)