your gold; Yet for your own sake 'tis secured, I hope – your houses too insured Celia has admitted her love and admiration for Strephon and this is his businesslike reply. He goes on almost to count all Celia's assets on his fingers. He assures her of his admiration, briefly and in highly conventional terms, then returns to the subject that really interests him: her fortune. Leapor ironically exposes the reality of the marriage market and how women are reduced to their financial worth, despite the veneer of sentiment. Today Leapor's work is celebrated for its sharp observations about life as a woman in the 18th century. She remains one of the few female labouring-class writers of the period, along with Ann Yearsley and Elizabeth Bentley. Bibliography Poems Upon Several Occasions. Vol. I. London: J. Roberts, 1748 (Scanned at Internet Archive) (Transcribed at Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive) Poems Upon Several Occasions. Vol. II. London: J. Roberts, 1751 (Scanned at Internet Archive) Notes Sources Blain, Virginia, et al., eds. "Leapor, Mary." The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. p. 640 Greene, Richard. Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford UP, 1993 Griffin, Dustin. "Mary Leapor and Charlotte Lennox." Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800. Cambridge UP, 1996. ; Todd, Janet, ed. "Leapor, Mary (Molly)." British Women Writers: a critical reference guide. London: Routledge, 1989. pp. 401–403 Van-Hagen, Stephen. Mary Leapor. The Literary Encyclopedia. 3 March 2007. Retrieved 20 November 2018 See also List of 18th-century British working-class writers External links Mary Leapor at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA) Project Continua: Biography of Mary Leapor Five Mary Leapor poems 1722 births 1746 deaths 18th-century English poets 18th-century British women writers English women poets 18th-century English writers People from West Northamptonshire District 18th-century English women 18th-century English people