SOURCE: Blunden, Edmund. “A Northamptonshire Poetess: Glimpses of an Eighteenth-Century Prodigy.” Journal of the Northamptonshire Natural History Society XXVII, no. 215 (June 1936): 59-74.

In the following essay, Blunden offers an appreciation of Leapor's poetry.

Of the agreeable writer whom I am now to discuss, I cannot pretend to offer a sufficient biographical account; and indeed part of my purpose is to encourage some other enthusiast forward with his or her fuller knowledge. Mary Leapor (for that is the name of the poetess) has never been quite forgotten since her death. William Cowper liked her work. She has her little nook in the Dictionary of National Biography. Some of the most discerning anthologists—Robert Southey, Alexander Dyce, and in our own day Sir John Squire selecting his “Women Poets”—have gladly revived a few poems of hers. But Professor Nichol Smith missed or rejected her in compiling his Oxford Book...