Mary Young was the daughter of Sir William Young, 1st Baronet, of North Dean, colonial governor of Dominica, and his second wife, Elizabeth Taylor, the daughter of the mathematician Brook Taylor.

She is seated on the far right on a parapet next to her brother William, wearing a lemon yellow dress and holding a letter.

[2] Her father owned four Caribbean sugar plantations and 896 enslaved Africans on his death, inherited by William.

Horatio and Amanda (1777) is a long sentimental poem about a couple permanently separated by war.

After his death in 1801, she published Poems (1803), which had a lengthy list of subscribers, including royalty and prominent authors like Elizabeth Montagu.