Author: Leech, Sarah
Biography:
LEECH, Sarah (b 1809)
Information about her life is known only from the biographical memoir that prefaces her Poems on Various Subjects. No corroborating records have been located and the date of her death is not known. She was born at Ballylennan near Raphoe in County Donegal, and her father, Thomas Leech, was a linen weaver. The family was Ulster-Scots, and probably Presbyterian. Her father died when she was three and the family suffered financially; she had little education although she learned to read and write and she began spinning at an early age. She was composing verse by about 1822 and was encouraged by a local benefactor. Some of her poems were published in the Londonderry Journal, thanks to a man who, hearing her recite them, submitted the poems to the newspaper in the hope of exciting interest in the young poet. In 1822 Leech and her mother moved from Ballylennan to Lettergull, County Donegal. Although she tried teaching, she suffered from ill-health and an episode of severe eye-pain; likely she had rheumatoid arthritis. Her one published book, edited by an unknown clergyman, has a frontispiece that depicts Leech at her spinning wheel holding a book. Nothing is known of her after 1828 although both a commemorative plaque in Raphoe and the Dictionary of Ulster Biography give the year of her death as 1830. Her book is dedicated to the leaders of the anti-Catholic Brunswick Clubs, founded in 1828 as an alternative to the Orange Order. (DIB 11 May 2021; Dictionary of Ulster Biography; Frank Ferguson, “Sarah Leech,” Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period; Goodridge) SR