Leadbetter, Mary (1758–1826)

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Leadbetter, Mary (1758–1826)

Irish-born poet and storywriter. Name variations: Mary Shackleton; Mrs. Leadbetter. Born Mary Shackleton at Ballitore, County Kildare, Ireland, in December 1758; died in Ballitore on June 27, 1826; granddaughter of Abraham Shackleton (1697–1771, a schoolmaster); married William Leadbetter, in 1791.

An Irish-born writer of Quaker birth, Mary Leadbetter became a friend and correspondent of Edmund Burke who had been a student of her grandfather's. She published Poems (1808), Cottage Dialogues among the Irish Peasantry (1811), and Cottage Biography (1822). Her best work, Annals of Ballitore, was published in 1862 as The Leadbetter Papers by R.D. Webb.