Selected Bibliography:
Mary Leapor (1722-1746)

By Laura Mandell,
Miami University of Ohio

Last revised 1 April 2000

Editions

• Collected Works

  • Poems Upon Several Occasions, by Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire (London: J. Roberts, 1748). [Volume 1, ed. Ralph Griffiths.]
  • Poems Upon Several Occastions, by the late Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire (London: J. Roberts, 1751). "The Second and Last Volume." [Ed. Samuel Richardson and Isaac Hawkins Browne.]
  • The Works of Mary Leapor: A Critical Edition, ed. Richard Greene and Ann Messenger (Forthcoming, Oxford Univ. Press).
  
  

• Individual Works (by year of publication)

  • "The Rural Maid's Reflections" [Leapor's title: "To Lucinda"], London Magazine 16 (1747): 45.
  • "Colinetta," The Midwife, or the Old Woman's Magazine 1 (16 November 1750).
  • "The Charms of Anthony," "Sylvia and the Bee," "The Setting Sun. To Sylvia," "An Ode on Mercy: In Imitation of Part of the 145th Psalm," "The Friend in Disgrace. A Dialogue," London Magazine 21 (1752): 429 (Sept.), 476 (Oct.), 524 (Nov.), and [the last two] 572-573 (Dec). These poems originally appeared in Poems Upon Several Occasions (see below) 1:249-52, 1:270-73, 1:261-62, 1:12-15, 1:10-12.
  
  

• Correspondence

  • Poems Upon Several Occasions, 2:303-24.
  
  

• Selected Teaching Editions and Anthologies (with commentary), by year of publication

  • Poems by Eminent Ladies, Particularly Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Behn, Miss Carter, ed. George Colman and Bonnell Thornton, 2 vols. (London: R. Baldwin, 1755), 2:16-134.
  • Poems by the Most Eminent Ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland . . . Selected, with an Account of the Writers, ed. George Colman and Bonnell Thornton, new ed., 2 vols. (London, T. Becket and Co., 1773), 2:16-134
  • Poems by the Most Eminent Ladies of Great Britain and Ireland: Re-published from the Collection of G. Colman and B. Thornton, Esqrs. with Considerable Alterations, Edditions, and Improvements, 2 vols. (London: W. Stafford, 1780). According to Margaret Ezell, the number of Leapor's poems included was reduced in the 1780 edition. See Writing Women's Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993), 112. Richard Greene says that the number of her poems was reduced in a later edition from 33 to 25; I presume that he means this edition. See Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 31.
  • Specimens of the Later English Poets, ed. Robert Southey, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 2:91-95.
  • Alexander Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses (London: T. Rodd, 1827), 171-78. Two poems.
  • Frederic Rowton, The Female Poets of Great Britain (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848); with additions by an American Editor (Philadephia: Henry C. Baird, 1853), 132-34. One poem. The poem appears in Rowton's London edition, but the page numbers here come from the Philadelphia edition, a facsimile reproduction, ed. Marilyn Williamson (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1981).
  • A Book of Woman's Verse, ed. John Squite (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921).
  • Wayside Poems of the Early Eighteenth Century, ed. Edmund Blunden and Bernard Mellor (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press, 1964).
  • The Meridian Anthology of Early Women Writers: British Literary Women From Aphra Behn to Maria Edgeworth 1660-1800, ed. Katharine M. Rogers and William McCarthy (New York: NAL Penguin, 1987). Only two poems.
  • A Northamptonshire Garland, ed. Trevor Hold (Northampton: Northamptonshire Libraries, 1989).
  • Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology, ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 194-217.
  • Poetry By English Women: Elizabeth to Victorian, ed. R. E. Pritichard (New York: Continuum, 1993).
  • British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology, ed. Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 1007-1020. This volume erroneously prints four stanzas from Leapor's poem "Epistle to Artemesia, On Fame" (1.43-53) as if they were the last four stanzas of "Man The Monarch," which should end with the line: "A long Succession of domestic Kings."
  • The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume I, gen. ed. David Damrosch; The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, ed. Stuart Sherman, 1:2145-49.
  
  

Biographies

• Biographia Dramatica, new ed.; carefully corr.; greatly enlarged; and continued from 1746 to 1782 [by Isaac Reed], 2 vols. (London: Rivingtons, etc., 1782), 1:278-79. Originally written by David Erskine Baker, published in 1764.
• Alexander Chalmers, The General Biographical Dictionary, new ed., rev. and enlarged, 32 vols. (London: J. Nichols, 1812), 20:110-11.
• Bridget Fremantle, Introduction to Poems Upon Several Occasions, 2:17-32. Memoir.
• Gentleman's Magazine 54, no. 2 (1784): 650, 702 (by John Duncombe), 806-807.
• Richard Greene, Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
• Mary Hays, Female Biography, 6 vols. (London: Richard Phillips, 1803).
• Proposals for Printing by Subscription the Poetical Works, Serious and Humorous, of Mrs. Leapor, Lately Deceased (London, 1747). Bodleian Library, Ballard MS 42.
• Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920).

Criticism

• Reference Works

  • The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Virginia Blaim, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), 640
  • An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter (New York: Garland Press, 1988), 287.
  • Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1917, 1973), 766.
  • British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, ed. Janet Todd (New York: Continuum, 1989), 401-403.
  • A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800, ed. Janet Todd (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), 192-93.
  
  

• Journals

  • Special issue of Eighteenth Century Theory and Interpretation, "Eighteenth-Century Laboring-Class Poetry," ed. William Christmas (forthcoming, Fall 2001).
  
  

• Reviews

  • Monthly Review 2 (1749): 14-25 and 5 (1751): 23-32. Reviews of Poems Upon Several Occasions.
  • Richard Greene, Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry, reviewed by Betty Rizzo, The Age of Johnson 7 (1996): 504.
  
  

• Monographs and Articles

  • Edmund Blunden, "A Northamptonshire Poetess: Glimpses of an Eighteenth-Century Prodigy," Journal of the Northamptonshire Natural History Society 28 (1936): 59-74.
  • Caryn Chaden, "Mentored from the Page: Mary Leapor's Relationship with Alexander Pope," in Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, ed. Donald C. Mell (Newark: Univ. of Deleware Press, 1996), 31-47.
  • Margaret Anne Doody, "Swift Among the Women," Yearbook of English Studies 18 (1988): 68-92. Rpt. in Critical Essays on Jonathan Swift, ed. Frank Palmeri (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993), 13-37.
  • George Eland, "Molly Leapor -- Poetess," Northamton County Magazine 5 (1932): 116-19.
  • Richard Greene, Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
  • Dustin Griffin, Literary Patronage in England 1650-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996).
  • Jocelyn Harris, "Sappho, Souls, and the Salic Law of Wit," in Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany, ed. Alan C. Kors and Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 232-58.
  • Anke Janssen, "Fruhe Lyrikerinnen des 18. Jahrhunderts in ihrem Verhaltnis zur Poetik und zur 'Poetic Diction,'" Anglia: Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie 99, nos. 1-2 (1981): 111-13.
  • Kathryn R. King, "Jane Barker, Mary Leapor and a Chain of Very Odd Contingencies," English Language Notes 33, no. 3 (March 1996): 14-27.
  • Donna Landry, Muses of Resistance: Labouring-Class Women's Poetry in Britain, 1739-1796 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
  • Kate Lilley, "Homosocial Women: Martha Samson, Constantia Grierson, Mary Leapor and Georgic Verse Epistle," in Women's Poetry in the Enlightenment: The Making of a Canon, 1730-1820 (New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's Press, 1999), 167-83.
  • Laura Mandell, "Demystifying (with) the Repugnant Female Body: Mary Leapor and Feminist Literary History," Criticism 38, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 551-82.
  • Betty Rizzo, "Christopher Smart, The 'C.S.' Poems, and Molly Leapor's Epitaph," The Library ser. 6/5, no. 1 (1983): 21-31.
  • Betty Rizzo, "Molly Leapor: An Anxiety for Influence," The Age of Johnson 4 (1991): 313-43.
  • Valerie Rumbold, "The Alienated Insider: Mary Leapor in 'Crumble Hall,'" British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 63-76.
  • Claudia Thomas, Alexander Pope and His Eighteenth-Century Women Readers (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1994).
  • Heidi Van de Veire, "A Note on Mary Leapor's Reputation," Notes and Queries 44, no. 2 (June 1997): 205-206.
  
  

Electronic Resources

• Mary Leapor's Poetry, from Representative Poetry On-Line (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto, 1994-) [cited 17 February 2000]: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/leapor.html.
• The Poetry of Mary Leapor (Oxford, Ohio: Miami University, 1996-) [cited 17 February 2000]: http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~leaporm/.

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