Author: Leadbeater, Mary
Biography:
LEADBEATER, Mary, formerly Shackleton (1758-1826: DIB)
She was the second of four children born to Richard Shackleton and his wife Elizabeth Carleton. Her parents were from Yorkshire and had moved to Ireland to work as tutors; members of the Society of Friends, they established Ballitore, County Kildare, as a Quaker settlement. She was educated at the non-denominational Ballitore boarding school (Edmund Burke had been a pupil) and quickly became known as a scholar and writer. Her diaries, published posthumously, document Ballitore life 1766-1824 and include a gripping account of the events of 1798 when much of the village was destroyed. She was taught herbal medicine by an aunt and worked as a healer in the community; she also ran a millinery establishment. In 1784 she visited Yorkshire and London with her father and met prominent writers including Burke and the publisher Joseph Johnson in London. In 1791 she married William Leadbeater, a landowner and farmer of Huguenot descent who had become a Quaker. They had at least three and possibly six children. Her successful publishing career began in 1794 with the anonymous Extracts, and Original Anecdotes. It was followed by prose works, Cottage Dialogues (1811 and 1813) and Tales for Cottagers (1814). Subsequent works issued in her lifetime included Cottage Biography (1822), Memoirs and Letters of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton (1822), Biographical Notices of Members of the Society of Friends (1823), and The Pedlars (1826). She died at Ballitore and was buried in the Quaker burial ground there. (ODNB 14 June 2021; DIB 14 June 2021)
Other Names:
- Mary Shackleton