Career
Mary"s parents are not known. They had nine children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Swift named her as part of his "triumfeminate," along with poet and scholar Constantia Grierson and literary critic Elizabeth Sican, and maintained that she was a preeminent poet — "the best Poetess of both Kingdoms" — though this assessment was not universally shared and she has only recently garnered much critical attention.
She moved into his circle and knew Laetitia Pilkington, who later became her harshest critic, Mary Delany, and poets Thomas Tickell, and Elizabeth Rowe.
Swift"s patronage was a substantial support to Barber"s career and her Poems on several occasions (1734) was successful. The subscription list for the volume was almost "without precedent for its resplendent length and illustrious contents, and it was moreover remarkable given Barber"s otherwise pedestrian social standing as an ailing Irish housewife." There were over nine hundred subscribers including various aristocrats and a number of literary luminaries, notably Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, Walpole, and of course Swift himself.
Her health declined after the publication of her Poems and subsequent writing was sparse. She did publish some verses about the gout, from which she suffered for over two decades, in the Gentleman"s Magazine in 1737.
She died in or around 1755.
Education
