ABSTRACT
Mary Leslie was born in Monghir, where her father, the Rev. Andrew Leslie, was working as a Baptist missionary. He later moved to Calcutta, taking up the post of minister of the Baptist church on Circular Road, where he remained until his retirement in c. 1865. Leslie’s first book, Ina, and Other Poems, demonstrates her interest in verse as a narrative form. Both ‘Ina’, the title poem, and ‘The Death of Moses’ are verse dramas; another poem, ‘Britannia’, offers a narrative history of England. Leslie published one more volume of poetry: Heart Echoes from the East: or, Sacred Lyrics and Sonnets; the title calls attention to her continued residence in India, but its devotional verses focus on unrelated matters. The Athenaeum was an exception: its reviewer deplored the author’s dependence on ‘exaggerated narratives rashly believed’, and her faith in ‘the most fearful versions of Sepoy atrocities and European suffering’.
