The Poems of Mary Shackleton Leadbeatter (Dublin & London, 1808)

A First-ever Digital Edition by Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum, Princeton, NJ),
with an extended & illustrated critical essay. For the Irish Women Poets digital textbase,
Alexander Street Press, Virginia, 2008.
http://alexanderstreet.com/brochure.pdfs/iwrp.wf.pdf

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Mary Shackleton Leadbeater (1758-1826)

Ballitore Village, County Kildare, Leinster Province, Ireland.
An unattributed portrait-silhouette, head-&-shoulders, 2.2 x 1.5, in Quaker cap.
The only extant likeness of Leadbeater, to date. The Quaker community eschewed portraiture, especially of
women, as a sinful vanity (face-painting), but the silhouette image was acceptable and not uncommon.
This image depicts a determined, stern individual; the line of her upper back, chin, and mouth, and the
size of her neck, suggest a woman of later years, dating the image to circa 1800 to 1826.
TCD MS 3519, Memoir of Mary Leadbeater by her niece (image pasted on flyleaf),
from the Shackleton Family Papers collection, TCD MSS 3517-3525.
With gracious permission (April 2008), The Board of Trinity College Dublin.
Photographer: Declan Corrigan, Ireland.

(This is the first-ever publication of the Leadbeater silhouette. Second copy, NLI.)

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Irelands long and bloody history enjoyed no respite during the Romantic period; and though
consumer tastes throughout the British Isles and on the Continent supported stylish vogues in the
Sublime, the Beautiful, the Gothic, and the Picturesque, Mary Shackleton Leadbeater was
focused on more urgent, political matters. This Quaker woman was poised at the crossroads of
Irish history, and her contribution to Irishwomens political writings cannot be overstated.
Leadbeater was not unique in her choice of mtier: researchers have valuably excavated a
substantial body of writings by Irelands women, writings which now lend to Irish women writers
of the 19th century a secure niche in the long continuum of Irish political response (Field Day
Anthology IV 1-119; Beatty 9-23; Mulvihill 2003: 607-610). Writing from her orderly Quaker
settlement in Ballitore Village, County Kildare, Leadbeater witnessed a flashpoint in European
history: her pen was stirred by horrific scenes of Anglo-Irish sectarian violence which she saw firsthand; she was roused by volatile debates on revolutionary upheavals in America and France; and
she became fully absorbed in public discourse on the transatlantic slave trade in which even
Quakers and Irish --- themselves victims of harsh persecution --- were profiteers (Riach 17;
Rodgers 138). As her writings disclose, Leadbeater saw herself as a privileged spectator to the
rising of a new world order, and the long process by which she crafted a role for herself in that
delirium of the brave is no less than riveting (Corrigan 1-10).
Leadbeaters writings and beliefs were valuably shaped by a coterie of established writers,
principally Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a beloved family friend and the lodestar of early-modern
Irish politics and aesthetics. But unlike this mighty orator, Leadbeater was neither firebrand nor
spokesperson; she was not a large, public figure. Women of this luster would rise up soon enough
for Ireland: Maud Gonne, Constance Gore-Booth (Countess Markievicz), Johanna Mary SheehySkeffington, Charlotte Despard.

Temperamentally different from her celebrity successors,

Leadbeater was a stern, peaceful Quakerwoman from a long line of Yorkshire educators and
community leaders; her daily routine spoke of a small life of little tasks compared to the large
events in her writings. But from her proscribed Quaker environs, where she busied herself
industriously as wife, mother, post-mistress, herbal healer, and director of a small bonnet-making
enterprise, Leadbeater was a vigilant observer of the fast-changing times: valuably for us, she set
it all down.
Her prolific body of work --- journals, letters, moral tales, essays, advice literature, rural
dialogues, a family memoir, a play, Quaker biographies, Classical translations, a schoolbook for
Irish youth, poems of social and political commentary --- reveals an abiding need for serious
engagement with the public sphere (Mulvihill 1998: 382-384; Luddy 2004 [online, unpaginated]).

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That engagement visited her door in the 1790s when she proved an unwilling, yet reliable, eye- and
ear-witness to the annus horribilis of 18th-century Irish history: the ir Amach 1798 (the Irish
Rising of 1798), one of many sustained rebellions by fierce Irish republicans against British
oppression in Ireland (Packenham 60-81; Smyth 1-20). As many of her terrorized community,
Leadbeater felt a musket to the chest, but she lived to tell the tale. Quill-pen in hand, Leadbeater
stepped outside of her life in the Quaker colony of County Kildare to enter the theatre of modern
European history. Her large corpus of work says to us today: Read this, for I was there: this is
what happened; here is the truth, here is my truth.
While her verse is typical of its time and place in its exclamatory rhetoric, its hortatory images of
Nature, and its sentimental portraits of cottagers, beggars, rustics, and Negro slaves, the best
poems of Leadbeater are remarkable for their explicit political content; it is this strain which merits
scrutiny today. Over three full decades of authorship, Leadbeater addressed the most compelling
issues of her era; and the mainspring of her work was religious belief, formed by Quaker virtues of
human equality, benevolence, and religious and ethnic toleration. As a Quaker, she was pledged to
non-violence; but as an observer of her times, one literally pulled into the bloodbath of the 1798
Rising, she was drawn to the underlying principles and confrontational clarity of public rebellion:
what modernists call realpolitik. Though a quiet, peaceful rebel, Leadbeater was a rebel all the
same and she was completely brave (ONeill 1998: 137-162).
We begin with Leadbeaters formative years:

Early Beginnings:
Family Life, Education, Literary Circle & Influences
Mary Shackleton Leadbeater is arguably the most closely documented of early-modern Irish
women writers owing to her Quaker regimen of spiritual self-assessment through vigorous diarywriting. Biographical facts on Leadbeater emanate from her own work, such as her 45-volume
journal and The Leadbeater Papers, 2 volumes (1862), which valuably includes A Memoir of
Mary Leadbeater by her niece (I: 1-12). Hence, the unusual length and subheadings of this
biographical essay on a major figure in this textbase who led both a long life (nearly seven
decades) and a very full one.
Mary Shackleton Leadbeater was born 1st December 1758 in the Quaker village of Ballitore,
County Kildare, Leinster Province, Ireland, the second child of the three daughters and one son of

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Richard Shackleton (1726-1792) and his second wife Elizabeth Carleton Shackleton (1726
1766 [1804?]), a woman of broad talents who doubtless served as an early mentor and model for
her precocious daughter. Both parents were dedicated members of The Religious Society of
Friends (Quakers). Mary Leadbeater was not the only distinguished individual of the Shackleton
line; she was kin and ancestor of the distinguished explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922),
also of County Kildare. Her branch of the Shackleton line was not Irish, but English; the Kildare
Shackletons hailed from Harden, Yorkshire and, in a century in which religious faith and politics
were of a piece, the Shackleton-Leadbeater circle were ardent Quakers, whose forward-looking
principles promoted universal benevolence and peaceful co-existence. Leadbeaters English Quaker
kin relocated to Ireland in the mid-18th century where persecuted sectarians, especially Quakers,
could avail themselves of broader social and religious opportunities. With their family and Quaker
compatriots, the Shackletons rapidly established themselves in Ireland as educators and community
leaders, and they achieved something quite special: they created the village of Ballitore, the only
planned and permanent Quaker settlement in 18 th-century Ireland, inspired by the Quaker enclave
in Selby, Yorkshire. Ballitore, a unique humanitarian paradigm of its time, was a self-sufficient
Quaker stronghold, complete with its own boarding-school, post-office, religious Meeting House,
farms, and cemetery. The Quaker work ethic, emphasis on learning, and talent for business made
them a distinguished upwardly-mobile group in 18th-century Ireland.
Literate by the age of four, according to contemporary accounts, Leadbeater was educated in a
Classical curriculum at the storied (non-denominational) Ballitore Boarding School, founded in
1727 by Leadbeaters grandfather, Abraham Shackleton. This cherished two-story structure had
an original enrollment of 38 pupils; tuition per term, 6. The schools headmaster, in the 1750s,
was Richard Shackleton, Mary Leadbeaters father. By this time, the Ballitore Boarding School
had grown in enrollment and reputation, with students arriving from England, France, Norway, and
Jamaica. Edmund Burke, the celebrated Irish statesman, political philosopher, and aesthetician,
was the schools most illustrious alumni.
In early youth, Leadbeater displayed skills in the expressive arts, mainly writing and painting
(especially watercolor); writing was her chief gift, and she soon showed herself to be both versatile
and prolific, if not hypergraphic (Flaherty 1-78; Mulvihill 2002: 322-324 ). Aldborough Wrightson,
an elderly scholar in the Ballitore community, was an early mentor: He taught me some Greek
verses, some beautiful lines from Cowley . I loved him [only] next to my father. he was fully
supplied with the treasures of Learning (Leadbeater Papers I: 45-46). Such early stewardship
was reinforced by Leadbeaters regular visits to the public library in County Limerick (she lived to
expand that very collection as donor and author). Beginning at the age of eleven, Leadbeater began

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a diary (or journal) which grew to staggering proportions: 45 manuscript volumes have survived,
preserved at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin (see Works Cited, entry 1). Leadbeaters
diaries, as one of her best readers has observed, is a tour de force of organizational genius
(Rodgers 140ff). Typical of the Quaker practice of regular spiritual self-assessment (ones Inner
Light), Leadbeater kept an orderly record of her experiences in Ballitore Village; her diary also
served as a handy commonplace book for memorable quotations, literary musings, occasional
verse, and jottings on local gossip. In her mature years, Leadbeater would draw upon these small
volumes as a rich resource for other kinds of writing, chiefly her social history, The Annals of
Ballitore (Leadbeater Papers, second ed., vol. I, 1862). Complementing her writerly skills,
Leadbeater was adept in herbal medicine, learned from one of her kin (an aunt), who was
Ballitores community healer in the 1780s; Leadbeater would later assume this role. (From the
1790s to the close of her life in 1826, her need to heal and rectify would serve a far grander
purpose.)

In 1784, at the age of twenty-six, Mary Leadbeater undertook an important trip to England with
her father, Richard Shackleton; this extended visit contributed significantly to her spiritual and
cultural development. At Selby in Yorkshire, she observed the community of Primitive Quakers, her
primitive coosins (Leadbeater Papers I: 147-149; Selby archives, Leeds University UK).
Leadbeater duly recorded in her ongoing journals the beliefs, activities, and membership of these
determinedly Plain Quakers. She also visited London, where she met such prominent figures as
Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Crabbe, the publisher Joseph Johnson, some of the Edgeworths, and a
longstanding family friend of the Shackletons: Edmund Burke. Burke proved a valuable political
and literary mentor for Mary Leadbeater, and their affectionate association took the form of a
faithful correspondence; some of their letters, and several poems by Leadbeater to or about Burke,
are published in her Poems (Dublin, 1808). Leadbeaters wistful lyric, Farewell to England
(Poems, 215-217) and her eulogy to Beaconsfield, England, the family seat of Edmund Burke
(Poems, [95]-101), were inspired by this important visit. Leadbeaters circle also included such
Irish women writers as the celebrated Maria Edgeworth (jewel of our Emerald Isle) and
Melesina Chenevix Trench (the Mrs R. Trench in Leadbeaters correspondence and the subject
of Leadbeaters encomium, On Reading Poems by a Lady [Poems 397-398]).
Mary Shackleton married late. At the age of 32, on 6th January 1791, she wed William Leadbeater
(1763-1827), a landowner, farmer, and businessman. Her husband was a Quaker convert,
originally of French (Huguenot) extraction. The newlyweds set up housekeeping amongst the
Kildare Quakers of village Ballitore, where their union was blessed with six children (some sources

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record only three children: Lydia, Mary, and Margaret). One of their daughters, Lydia Leadbeater
(later, Mrs Lydia Fisher), was evidently active in literary circles as the quiet patron of Irish poetnovelist Gerald Griffin. True to her Quaker work ethic, Mary Leadbeater was industrious and
enterprising; in addition to her duties as mother, wife, homemaker, and local healer, she maintained
two employments: Village post-mistress and director of a small bonnet-making concern. But all of
this busy life was not enough for Mrs Leadbeater.

30 Years of Public Authorship

(1794-1824)
Complementing her very public life in Ballitore, Mary Leadbeater maintained an active private life
as a writer: this proved to be her true identity, this was the essential woman. Owing to her
developing network of contacts in Ireland and now in England, Leadbeater was well received by
publishers; her work sold well in bustling book hubs in Dublin, London, and the new Quaker
colony of Philadelphia. The arc of her public career in authorship spanned a full thirty years
(1794-1824), a remarkable fact for a woman writer of her day. Her oeuvre presents an impressive
range of genres: translations from the Classics, poetry, drama, narrative sketch and moral tale,
essay, improvement literature, childrens literature, historical chronicle (annals), letters, family
history (genealogy), biography and autobiography, and an educational manual (a primer).
Slow to wed and slow to publish, Leadbeater entered the world of publication in her maturity, in
her mid-30s; her decision to take her work public followed the collapse of a brave extensive plan
which she and her husband had hoped to realize (Leadbeater Papers I: 205). Inspired by Edmund
Burkes speech in Parliament against the slave trade (May, 1789) and by a proliferation of
abolitionist discourse in London, Dublin, the new American colonies, and on the Continent, the
Leadbeaters made plans in 1790-1791 to leave Ballitore for revolutionary France where they
might, under the patronage of Madame Roland (Marie-Jeanne Roland ne Phlipon, guillotined
1793), establish various study centers and industrial workshops at the former Chambord palace
(Leadbeater Papers I: 204-205; ONeill 1998:153; Rodgers 2007:144-145); but this thrilling
project was abandoned due to the general mayhem of the times. It was but a few years after this
disappointment, that Leadbeater found a way to give voice to her political beliefs by stepping into
the world of authorship. Her literary identity effectively preserved her political idealism when being
an activist and a contributor to the new world order proved impossible. This important link

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between Leadbeaters authorial dbut in 1794 and her failed plan of the early 1790s is a
critical connection in her biography heretofore overlooked.
So it was in 1794, after this dbcle, that Leadbeater premiered her writings (albeit anonymously)
with a school-book (a primer) for the improvement of youth, entitled Extracts and original
anecdotes (Dublin: R M Jackson). This first publication of Leadbeaters was an evangelical work
on Quaker history, but it also was a collection of didactic verse on secular and religious subjects;
its most memorable piece, reprinted in Leadbeaters 1808 Poems (87-116), is her longest and
arguably best poem, The Negro: addressed to Edmund Burke, which reveals both her moral
fervor and Burkes influence on her evolving social philosophy and abolitionist spirit. The poem is
an historical survey of its subject (the Negro) and also a critique, in the traditional form of a
philosophical verse-essay, on slavery and the slave-trade, whose prominence in the transatlantic
had become a profitable economic system well before 1794. Above all, Leadbeaters important
poem seeks to secure Burke in the polity of abolitionist agitation. Rhetorically, the poem exploits
the tactic of the exempla, being a catalogue of worthies; the poets godlike band includes such
liberal-thinking activists as John Woolman, Prince Leopold of Tuscany, Thomas Clarkson, and
Lady Arabella Denny. The volatile subject of slavery drew the pens of several early-modern women
writers, of course: Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Birkett, Maria Edgeworth, Hannah
More, et al. (Ferguson 51-68, 249-272).

In 1808, emboldened by the warm reception of her literary dbut in 1794, Leadbeater asserted her
authorship unambiguously on the title-page of her second book: Poems by Mary Leadbeater, the
contribution to this first-ever textbase of Irish women poets (copy-text: University of Arizona;
Subscribers List, University of Colorado at Boulder; Burke portrait, laid in, University of
California at Berkeley, unique to this copy). Leadbeaters poetry-book, now rare, is a substantial
(419-page) miscellany consisting of some 70 verses, selected letters, and Leadbeaters metrical
translation of her husbands prose translation of Maffeo Vegios creation (1428) of a thirteenth
book to Virgils neid. Leadbeaters poetry-book presents an impressive range of poetic genres:
character-sketch, elegy, encomium, epithalamium, philosophical verse-essay, translation, and verseletter. Leadbeaters characteristic mode of versification is a loose version of the 18 th-century
English couplet; interestingly, she does not test her talents in the ode, the principal verse-form of
her era. Leadbeaters 1808 book merits attention on several grounds: Firstly, Leadbeater had been
assembling such a book for about 30 years, dating from the 1770s, well before its publication in
1808; thus, the entire volume handily serves as an overview of Leadbeaters life and interests, as
well as her poetic development. The collection includes poems on subjects public and private:

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Ballitore Village and its memorable characters, Leadbeaters family circle, her visit to England,
Edmund Burke, and current political topics. Second, these poems and their poetess were judged
important enough in 1808 to receive not one, but two imprints: Leadbeaters 1808 Poems was
published by Martin Keene in Dublin, and also distributed in London in 1808 by Longman, Hurst,
Rees, and Orme. Thirdly, the book was published by subscription, and the Subscribers Names in
the books frontmatter consists of an impressive eight-page list. One notices that her supporters
(whose locales are valuably identified) are both English and Irish readers, from Liverpool and
London, and from Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, Cork, Donegal, Belfast, etc. This information
matters as it provides a reliable demographic of Leadbeaters readers: the long subscribers list tells
us who was reading her work, who was paying attention to this rising talent in the quaint Quaker
settlement of Ballitore, Kildare. On the list we see familiar names associated with her circle
(Leadbeater, Shackleton, Trench, Grubbs), as well as a listing for The Young Hibernian, being
the fourteen-year-old Irish poet Edward Cummins, whose own Poetic Works dbuted in Dublin in
1808. Also in the front matter of Leadbeaters book (University of California-Berkeley copy) is a
full-page, laid in engraving of Burke, styled after Sir Joshua Reynoldss familiar portrait: this is the
books only (introduced) illustration. The presence of this portrait, in the Berkeley copy, is entirely
appropriate in view of the prominence of Burke in the books poems and selected letters (87-116,
[247]-251, [317]-[323]); thus writes the poet of her political hero and mentor: O THOU, this
countrys boast, this ages pride, / Freedoms firm friend, and Pitys genrous guide, / Great
Burke! ([87]). One of Burkes final writings was a deathbed note to Leadbeater in 1797 and
published in her 1808 collection; he sadly writes: I have ever been an admirer of your talents and
virtues, and shall ever wish most cordially for every thing which can tend to your credit and
satisfaction.I have been at Bath [Bath, England, popular spa and resort] these four months to no
purpose; and am to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield tomorrow. ([321]-322). While
the majority of the poems in this hefty volume engage with local subjects (deaths, weddings, old
cottagers, victims of the 1798 Rising), the books most important political verses are Leadbeaters
long poem The Negro, addressed to Edmund Burke (87-116), discussed above, and the short
lyric, Lines Written on a Joyful Event (401-402), marking the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act,
which entered the statute books on 25th March 1807. This celebratory poem is a vivid contrast to
one of the saddest verses in the collection, The Triumph of Terror (309-311) on the defeat of
reason and all humanistic principles when the authors village was raided and nearly destroyed
during the 1798 Rising.
And of Leadbeaters poetic strengths, what might we say today? We might say that she garnered a
faithful readership for her poems, but that she was not a particularly good poet; her chief strength

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was prose: social history, narrative, chronicle, and life-writing. Her poetry, for all of its color,
variety, and ardor, is heavily freighted with effusion, cloying description, and tedious
exclamation. While it is not without content and thought, certainly, it is weak in craft. Edmund
Burke himself was a tactful, if embarrassed, reader of her work and he tenders good advice on her
Beaconsfield in a letter of 1784: Some of the lines are not quite finished as to match the rest,
and some time or other I may take the liberty of pointing them out to you; and some of the rhymes
hitch upon words, to which nothing (not even you) can give grace (Poems ofLeadbeater 104105). Her poetic lapses notwithstanding, it is the political content in her poems which summons our
attention today.
In 1811, Leadbeater published Cottage Dialogues among the Irish Peasantry. As with her 1808
poetry-book, this new offering was available on the Irish and the English markets. The Dublin
edition was published by J. and J. Carrick; the London edition brought Leadbeater as much as 50
from its publisher Joseph Johnson, a supporter of another high-profile Irishwoman writer: Maria
Edgeworth. The most remarkable fact of Leadbeaters Cottage Dialogues is the mediation of
Edgeworth, who supplied both preface and notes; her collaborative role evidently stimulated
consumer reception and sales. The Dialogues were moral and educative exchanges between Irish
rustics, emanating from Leadbeaters goal to improve the Irish peasantry. The inflected
conversational format she adopted (voices from real life) was suggested by the Irish writer
William Le Fanu (1774-1817), whom Leadbeater acknowledges. The Dialogues tendered practical
advice for wives and mothers on household management and family organization; one such
dialogue contrasts the wastrel housewife with the thrifty housewife, thus promoting the authors
Quaker values. In these easy chats between cottagers, readers also received recipes for nourishing
meals and herbal medicinal concoctions. In 1813, the Dialogues saw a second series (Dublin: John
Cumming), this time with conversations directed at working men and intended to perform the same
service to the Men of the Cottage that was in the first Part designed for their consorts. A third
sequel, The Landlord's Friend, was published by Cumming in 1813, directed at the gentry. In
1814, Leadbeater collaborated with her talented step-mother, Elizabeth Shackleton, to produce
Tales for Cottagersthe Present Condition of the Irish Peasantry, also published by Cumming,
and presenting moral tales of perseverance, temperance, and frugality; the volume also included a
play, Honesty Is The Best Policy. In 1822, Leadbeater concluded her cottagers series with
Cottage BiographyLives of the Irish peasantry (Dublin: C. Bentham), being narrative sketches
inspired by actual local figures, such as Mary Murphy (Luddy 1995:12-13).
Leadbeaters Memoirs and Letters of [her parents] Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton (London:
Harvey & Darton) was published in 1822, reissued (1849) by Lydia Ann Barclay. This homage of a

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loving daughter to loving parents illustrates Leadbeaters continuing commitment to family history.
Leadbeaters Biographical notices of members of the Society of Friendsresident in Ireland
(London: Harvey & Darton, 1823) is a useful documentary record of early-l9th-century Irish
Quaker culture: membership, tenets, activities. The final publication in Leadbeaters thirty years of
authorship was written for the Kildare Place Society, entitled The Pedlars: A Tale (Dublin:
Bentham and Harvey, [1824 or 1826]), being dialogues on Irish fairy lore and curiosities.
Ironically, it was Leadbeaters posthumous publication which secured her fame. In 1862, her
ambitious Ballitore journals (1766-1824) were collected and edited by her niece, Elizabeth
Leadbeater, and promoted by Richard Davis Webb, a Dublin Quaker printer, publisher, and
abolitionist, as The Leadbeater Papers. Annals of Ballitore, with a Memoir of the Author, 2 vols
(London: Bell & Daldy). Recording the cultural life and history of Ballitore, 1766 to 1823, these
documentary writings provide a valuable social history of a particular rural Irish village. Two
chapters are famously devoted to her reconstruction of the Irish Rising of 1798, which she
observed firsthand from one of the widows of her parents home, overlooking the village square.
Over several months duration, in Wexford, Antrim, Down, and other battle sites, some 25,000
lives were lost and vast areas of the country were wasted. Organized by The United Irishmen, a
fierce band of republican rebels, the Rising was inspired by two significant historical precedents:
the American Revolution and the French Revolution. She supplies historians with a vivid day-byday account of the general mayhem and atrocity of that event, marked by public executions and the
destruction of her own village. Ballitore was occupied first by Crown forces and then by Irish
insurgents. The English government took revenge on the inhabitants of Ballitore, who ministered
impartially to the wounded on both sides of the fray, by destroying many homes and executing
several residents. Leadbeater and her husband narrowly escaped death. She records in these
journals her horror at what she had witnessed : we saw the youthful form of the murdered
Richard Yeates his bosom all bloody. For many days after I thought my food tasted of blood, and
at night I frequently awakened by feelings of horror (I:223) (Mulvihill, [2009]). The second
volume of her Papers includes heretofore unpublished letters from Edmund Burke, as well as
correspondence from Melesina Trench and George Crabbe.

Death, Legacy, Posthumous Fame

Leadbeater did not depart this life gently or willingly; she succumbed to congestive heart failure
(dropsy) which kept her bedridden for over a year (Memoir, Leadbeater Papers I: 11-12).
Surrounded by her immediate family, she reportedly died a painful death, at the age of sixty-seven,

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at Ballitore, County Kildare, 27th June 1826. She was interred in the villages Quaker burialground.
The legacy of Mary Shackleton Leadbeater is impressive. As a woman and as a Quaker, she
flourished on the margins of early-modern Irish society, yet she proved to be a valuable chronicler
of her community and its neighboring Irish cottagers. Certainly, she knew the Irish character and
her educative writings resound richly with Irish voices, thus serving as a permanent, documentary
record of 19th-century Irish idioms and dialects. Her contribution to Irish cultural memory
cannot be overstated. By all accounts, she was an exemplar of Quaker modesty, yet Leadbeater
valorized herself by what she left behind: good works, a large corpus of writing, good advice for
the Irish peasantry, and, foremostly (as Kevin ONeill suggested, 2003) a sensible post-rebellion
model of neighborhood communalism as a new paradigm of nationhood. When her own village
was nearly destroyed, she formulated a strategy for its restoration; and at a time when Ireland was
imbued with hot revolutionary fervor, hers was a rational, forward-looking vision for Irish Quakers
and for the increasingly mixed demographic of Ireland. Leadbeaters body of work displays an
important and adventurous literary talent, one whose value finally captured the serious attention of
scholars in the closing decades of the twentieth century (Mulvihill [2009]). John McKennas play,
The Woman at the Window (premire, Ballitore Meeting House, Co. Kildare, 30th October 2003),
is a recent homage to the life and work of this brave and talented Quaker Irishwoman. History has
honored her with an historical landmark: the restored Leadbeater House, Ballitore, Kildare, which
includes the Ballitore Library and Reading Room (Kildare County Council & Heritage Office; see
http://kildare.ie/SouthKildareHeritageTrail/ballitore.htm).

Works Cited
Primary Sources
(MSS & Printed Texts by Leadbeater)

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National Library of Ireland, Dublin. [Diaries of Mary Leadbeater, written in her own hand, during her lifetime]. 45
manuscript volumes: MSS 9292-9314, 1769-89, 13 vols; MSS 9315-9329, 1790-1809, 15 vols; MSS 9330-9346,
1810-26, 17 vols).
Trinity College Dublin. Shackleton Family Papers, MSS 3517-3525.
Yale University, Beinecke Library, New Haven, CT. Ballitore Papers. Osborn Collection. 1996; 2005. Letters, essays,
journals associated with the Leadbeater-Shackleton circle.
http://webtext.library.yale.edu/beinflat/osborn.BALLITOR.HTM
[Mary Leadbeater.] Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth. Dublin: R M Jackson, 1794.
Poems by Mary Leadbeater. Dublin: M.[artin] Keene, 1808; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1808.
Cottage Dialogues among the Irish Peasantry by Mary Leadbeater. With Notes and a Preface by Maria Edgeworth.
London: J.[oseph] Johnson & Co., 1811.
Tales for CottagersBy Mary Leadbeater and Elizabeth Shackleton. Dublin: James Cumming for John Cumming,
1814.
[Mary Leadbeater.] The Story of Mary Murphy. Cottage Biography. Dublin, 1822. Rpt in Maria Luddy, Women In
Ireland: 1800-1918. A Documentary History. Cork UP, 1995, 1999.
Memoirs and Letters of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton, late of Ballitore, Ireland, compiled by their daughter,
Mary Leadbeater, including a concise biographical sketch, and some letters of her grandfather, Abraham Shackleton .
London: Harvey and Darton, 1822; London: Samuel Wood & Sons, 1823; subsequent printings, NY and Baltimore,
1823.
[Mary Leadbeater.] Biographical Notices of Members of the Society of Friends, who were resident in Ireland. London:
Harvey & Darton, 1823.
The Leadbeater Papers: A Selection from the MSS. And Correspondence of Mary Leadbeater. Volume I: Mary
Leadbeaters Annals of Ballitore with a Memoir of the Author. Volume II: Letters from Edmund Burke heretofore
unpublished, and the Correspondence of Mrs R. Trench and Rev. George Crabbe with Mary Leadbeater. Second
edition. 2 vols. London: Bell and Daldy, 1862. Digital copy by Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&id=fDY2AAAAMAAJ&dq=the+leadbeater+papers&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=VQSf5PKocg&si
g=6AKfqj8t0py_0hsX-sZII35TU8Y. Modern reprint, introduced by Maria Luddy, Routledge / Thoemmes Press, 1998.
Mary Leadbeater. Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)-EIRData (datasets of Irish writers). 1984-. Bruce
Stewart (University of Ulster), site compiler. Presents excerpts from Leadbeaters writings and scholarly
commentary; http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/1/Leadbeater,M/life.htm .
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Volumes IV and V: Irish Womens Writing and Traditions. Eds
Mirn N Dhonnchadha, Margaret MacCurtain, Siobhn Kilfeather, Angela Bourke, Maria Luddy, Mary ODowd,
Gerardine Meaney, Clair Wills. 2 vols. Cork University Press, 2002. See IV: Politics, eds Mary ODowd and Maria
Luddy, respectively, 1-119; see also Leadbeater, ed Rosemary Raughter, IV: 502-505, 515-6.

Secondary Sources
(Selected Criticism)
Beatty, John D., ed. Protestant Womens Narratives of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (2001).
Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, Isobel Grundy. Mary Leadbeater. In The Orlando Project: A History of Womens
Writings from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge UP, 2006; http://www.ualberta.ca/ORLANDO/.
Corrigan, Mario. All that Delirium of the Brave: Kildare in 1798. Kildare County Council, 1997.
Ferguson, Moira. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834. London & NY:
Routledge, 1992.

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Flaherty, Alice W., M.D. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain. NY:
Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Luddy, Maria, ed. Women In Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History. Cork UP, 1995, 1996. Includes a
transcription of Leadbeaters Story of Mary Murphy [Dublin, 1822], 12-13.
-----. Leadbeater [ne Shackleton], Mary (1758-1826). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004;
online edition (unpaginated): http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16232.
Mulvihill, Maureen E. Mary Leadbeater. Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Eds Paul and June Schlueter.
Rutgers UP, 1998, 382-384.
-----. Fourteen Hundred Years of Irish Women Writers. Eighteenth-Century Studies. Volume 36, no. 4 (Summer,
2003), 607-610. Review of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Volumes IV and V: Irish Womens Writing &
Traditions (Cork University Press, 2002); see Read Reviews link at
http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/epages/corkuniversitypress.storefront.
-----. Hypergraphia and Writing by Early-modern Women Writers.Canadian Journal of History (August 2005), 322324. Review: Errant PlagiaryLady Sarah Cowper by Anne Kluger (Stanford UP, 2002). See
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_200508/ai_n15745890.
--------. Mary Shackleton Leadbeater. Dictionary of Irish Biography. Eds. James McGuire and James Quinn. 7 vols.
Cambridge University Press, [late 2009].
ODowd, Mary. A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800 . London & NY: Pearson, Longman, 2005. Passim.
Review by Maureen E. Mulvihill, Womens History Review (April, 2008).
ONeill, Kevin, Mary Leadbeater. Dictionary of Irish Literature. Ed. Robert G. Hogan. Second ed., 1979, p367.
------. Almost a gentlewoman: gender and adolescence in the diary of Mary Shackleton. In Chattel, servant or
citizen: women's status in church and state. Eds. Mary O'Dowd and Sabine Wichert (1995).
-----. Mary Shackleton Leadbeater: Peaceful Rebel. In The Women of 1798. Dublin: Four Courts, 1998. Eds. Daire
Keogh and Nicholas Furlong, 137-62
-----. Woe to the oppressor of the poor! post rebellion violence in Ballitore. In 1798 Rebellion: A Bicentennial
Perspective. Eds. Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Daire Keough, Kevin Whalen. Dublin: Four Courts, 2003, 363393.
Riach, D C. Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery, 1830-1860. Unpublished thesis; Edinburgh, 1975.
Rodgers, Nini. Two Quakers and a Utilitarian: The Reaction of Three Irish Women Writers to the Problem of Slavery,
1789-1807. Royal Irish Academy Proceedings, Vol. 100C (2000), 137-157. See also Rodgers Ireland, Slavery and
Anti-Slavery: 1645-1865. NY: Palgrave, 2007.

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Quaker Bonnet, circa 1850-1880

Bonnet of Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), Quaker minister and abolitionist.
See http://www.civilwar.si.edu/slavery_mott2.html
With gracious permission, 30th May 2008,
Division of Home and Community Life, Costume Collection,
National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
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The Quaker bonnet, typically handsewn and of durable buckram, was a larger, sturdier
headcovering than the Quakerwomans cap. The bonnet was also a protective headpiece, and (for
modestys sake) its deep brim concealed more of the wearers face and hair. The bonnet was worn
chiefly for public appearances and especially for traveling. This bonnet would be somewhat similar
to those handcrafted by Mary Leadbeaters own bonnet shop in Ballitore Village,
County Kildare, Ireland.

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Contributors Note
Maureen E. Mulvihill (PhD Wisconsin 82; post-doctoral, Yale Center for British Art; Columbia
University Rare Book School; NEH Fellow, Johns Hopkins University) is a scholar & writer with the
Princeton Research Forum, Princeton, NJ. She is a broadly-published specialist in early-modern English
& Irish literatures. Dr Mulvihill is Advisory Editor of Ireland And The Americas, 3 vols (Santa Barbara,
CA; Cambridge UK: ABC Clio, 2008) and her book credits, to date, include Poems by Ephelia (NY, 1992;
second printing 1993); Thumbprints of Ephelia (an online multimedia archive; ReSoundings 2001,
Millersville University, PA.); Ephelia (Ashgate UK 2003); and the first edition of Mary Shackleton
Leadbeaters Poems (Dublin, 1808) for the first-ever online textbase: Irish Women Poets (VA: Alexander
Street Press, 2008). She has been a visiting professor at St Johns University-Manhattan, New York

15
University, Fordham College-Lincoln Ctr., and St Josephs College-Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, NY. She has
been a Guest Speaker at Princeton University, McMaster University (Ontario), NYU, Utah State
University (Logan), Brooklyn Museum of Art, Texas State University (San Marcos), and SUNY-Stony
Brook (James Johnson Sweeney Conference, 2008; host, Jackson Pollock-Lee Krasner Foundation, NY).
Her extended essay on the British Librarys Oscar Wilde exhibition (NYC venue: Morgan Library), is
published in the Irish Literary Supplement (Fall, 2002; digitized, with images, The Oscholars, June
2002); her illustrated article on the Grolier Clubs Victorian Faces exhibition (the Samuels Lasner
Collection) appears in the Victorian Society in America e-newsletter (March-April 2008). She contributed
essays on Irishwomen writers to the Schlueters Encyclopedia of British Women Writers (1998) and to
Alexander Gonzalezs Irish Women Writers (2006); she also contributed the first-ever article on 18thC
Dublin patriot printer, James Esdall, to the Oxford DNB (2004). A regular contributor to The Irish
Literary Supplement, scholarly journals, collections, and reference works, she is at work on a new book,
on Irishwomens political writings and response, pre-1801.

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