ABSTRACT
Mary Leapor spent most of her brief life with her talent unrecognised, save by only a few acquaintances in her native village of Brackley. Shortly after her death from measles, however, she gained an unqualified favourable reputation which endured into the early nineteenth-century and which has been enthusiastically revived in the late twentieth century. With her vivacious wit and unquestionable talent, she has been one of the few poets from labouring-class origins whose right to re-enter the expanding canon has been unchallenged. The primary source for biographical information about Leapor's life is the lengthy letter introducing her second posthumous volume of Poems Upon Several Occasions. In this letter, Bridget Freemantle, one of Leapor's earliest supporters, elaborates upon the poet's short and morally spotless life. In the eighteenth-century, Leapor's poems were included amply in the successful anthology Poems by Eminent Ladies, and she has continued to be included in collections, particularly of poetry by women, into readers own day.
