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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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 12 December 2024.]