Brought up in Brackley, Northamptonshire, the daughter of a gardener, and educated only within her family, Mary Leapor worked as her father's housekeeper after her mother's death in 1742. She wrote poetry that came to the attention of Bridget Freemantle, a member of the local gentry. Freemantle encouraged Mary to publish in London, but she died of the measles before her only book, Poems upon Several Occasions (1748, reissued in 1751), came out. Edmund Blunden published her biography in A Northamptonshire Poetess: Mary Leapor (1936; del pam B558 N66 1936 Fisher Rare Book Library); and Richard Greene's Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-century Women's Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; PR 3539 L49 Z66 Robarts Library) fully treats both her life and work.