Esther Inglis Manuscripts on Exhibition (date: new to old)

2024 – Renaissance: Scotland and Europe 1480 to 1630. National Library of Scotland, June 2024 – April 2025.

1) Cinquante Octonaires, 1607. NLS MS 25240.

2) Les Pseaumes de David, 1615. BINDING. NLS MS 8874.

3) Als. to James VI/I, 20 June 1620. NLS Adv. MS 33.1.6, Vol.20, no.21

2024 – Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920. Tate Britain, May – Oct 2024.

1) Livre des Pseaumes, 1599. Oxford, Christ Church College, MS 180. See writeup here on Christ Church’s website.

2) Cinquante Octonaires, 1607. RCIN 1047001.

2023 – Apia Carolina Garcia, Exaggerations of History, Coral Springs Museum of Art (Florida), March – April 2023. Apia featured Esther Inglis as one of her historical women in this exhibition for Women’s History month and created an Instagram collage: https://www.instagram.com/coralspringsmoa/reel/Cp59_mrjYRc/

2023 – Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1500-1800. Baltimore Museum of Art, Oct 2023 – Jan 2024.

 Argumenta in librum Psalmorum, 1606. Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Typ 212.

2022 – The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. Metropolitan Museum, New York, Oct 2022 – Jan 2023.

Octonaries, c.1600. Folger Library V.a.91.

Web Essays (date: new to old)

Anna Nadine Pike, “Esther Inglis at the Wormsley Library.” Blogpost for Edinburgh University Library, 31 March 2025: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/estheringlis/2025/03/31/esther-inglis-wormsley-library/

Rewriting the Script: the works and words of Esther Inglis. This rich website was planned by Anna Nadine Pike under the auspices of the University of Edinburgh Library. It is designed to be informational for anyone from scholars to the general public, and offers lots of resources (including sound and visuals) that can be used by teachers and students: https://exhibitions.ed.ac.uk/exhibitions/rewriting-the-script

Anna Nadine Pike, Series of blog posts on the Esther Inglis 2024 Project site from Edinburgh University Library, beginning January 2024: Project Introduction; Esther Inglis and her Family in Edinburgh; Meet the Manuscripts; Call for Papers for the October 2024 Conference; Music for Esther Inglis: August Events.

Sarah Rose Sharpe, “The Lost Art of Handwriting,” review of new book by Leslie Smith, Handwritten: Remarkable People on the Page (Bodleian Library, 2024) July 11, 2024. https://hyperallergic.com/928594/the-lost-art-of-handwriting-lesley-smith/

“Rare Esther Inglis Manuscript Unveiled”. Friday, 21 July, 2023. Reveal at University of St. Andrews Library of a gorgeous manuscript that has been in private hands for decades. It was specially shown at the International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature. Text and photos at: https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/rare-esther-inglis-manuscript-unveiled/

Anderson, Kate. “Esther Inglis: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman,” Blogpost, National Galleries of Scotland, May 3, 2022. (Anderson is Senior Curator of Portraiture, pre-1700, at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery where this unusual portrait is located.)

Sperrazza, Whitney. “Before Lovelace.” Lady Science, December 3, 2020. (Article discusses Inglis in context of print as embroidery and the influence of embroidery on the early computer work of Charles Babbage and Ida Lovelace.)

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Paper Portraits: the Self-Fashioning of Esther Inglis.” ArtHerstory, June 30, 2020.

Rundle, David. “Postcard from Harvard IX: the genius of Esther Inglis.” Bonaelitterae, May 23, 2018.

Ross, Sarah. “Creative Women on the Move: Two Transnational Celebrities, an Actor and a Calligrapher.” SSEMWG Blogpost, May 2017. The post compares Inglis and Isabella Andreini as two middle-class married women who travelled and had careers as writer/artist and actor/dramatist.

Clement, Taylor. “Selfie Fashioning and the Self-Portraits of Calligrapher Esther Inglis.” Early Modern Women: Lives, Texts, Objects, June 15 2017.

“Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared,” “Esther Inglis (1571-1624). Bodleian Library (2016). https://treasures.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/treasures/esther-inglis/

Burnette, Amy K. “The English Renaissance ‘Timeline”: Part III” [on Esther Inglis, Folger MS V.a.91]. Metathesis, January 1, 2016.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Princely New Year’s Gift? A Newly-Discovered Manuscript.” Folger Library, The Collation, January 5, 2017.

Abrahams, Gaeby, Rebecca Hazell, Teresa Kennedy, Seana Stevenson. Octonaries. Blog with old-spelling transcription and modern spelling text with annotations of select Octonaries, April 2, 2012.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Spotlight on a Calligrapher.” Folger Library, The Collation, February 27, 2012.

Christianson, Karen. “Renaissance Calligraphy Books.” Newberry Library, February 15, 2012.

Sheridan, Maia. “Highlight: Esther Inglis’s Octonaries, a Masterpiece in Miniature.” University of St. Andrews, Echoes from the Vault, July 25, 2011.

MacCaulay, Margaret. “Mistresse of the Golden Pen.” Textualities, 2002.

Print Sources (date: new to old)

Sabrina Alcorn Baron. “The Year of Esther: A Review Essay.” EMWJ, 20.1 (Fall 2025): 130-35. Reviews the various events and publications commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Esther Inglis.

Clement, Taylor. “Tracing Women’s Copy Culture: Esther Inglis and the Octonaires,” EMWJ, 19.2 (Spring 2025): 283-309.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Lace, Letters, and the Calligraphic Manuscripts of Esther Inglis.” Gender and the Book Trades, ed. Elise Watson and Jessica Farrell-Jobst (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 356-381. Available online via Brill.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Portraits of a Lady: the Self-presentation of Esther Inglis, Protestant Limner.” Renaissance Quarterly, 76.2 (Summer 2023) 542-88.

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis: A Franco-Scottish Jacobean Writer and Her Octonaries Upon the Vanity and Inconstancie of the World.” Studies in Scottish Literature, 48.2 (2023) 51-93. Includes a textual edition of the Octonaries by Jamie Reid Baxter and Georgianna Ziegler.  https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol48/iss2/ Also available as a stand-alone print publication from Scottish Poetry Reprints, 12.  Columbia SC:  Studies in Scottish Liteature, 2023, pp.viiii + 100, illustrated.   ISBN 9798851951244

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Esther Inglis.” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World (18 June 2023) Preview: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/entries/10.4324/9780367347093-RERW97-1/esther-inglis-protestant-calligrapher-georgianna-ziegler-kristen-poole-lauren-shohet?context=rrorw&refId=3ba07d4b-5151-45b6-8f84-98241978f835

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis’s Discours de la foy and her ‘portraict de la RELIGION CHRESTIENNE‘, gifted to Elizabeth Tudor on 1 January 1591.’ Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 17 (2022) 63-94. For full text of the Discours in French with translation, notes, and Appendices, see this site at: https://estheringlis.com/discours-de-la-foy-1591-v2/

Demers, Patricia. “Tails of Cross-Channel Comets: From Acclaim to Obscurity.” Renaissance and Reformation, 43.2 (Spring 2020) 213-34.

Harris, Sine Kay. “‘Astonishing Virtue of Absence’? The influence of both manuscript and print on the paratexts of Esther Inglis’ ‘Octonaries’ (1607) and ‘Pseaumes’ (1615).” MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Paasivirta, Hanna. From Petit Leith to Great Britain: Esther Inglis’ Hand in James VI and I’s Diplomacy. MPhil Modern Languages Dissertation. University of Oxford, Trinity Term 2019.

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Glore of thy sex, and miracle to men: Esther Inglis and Scottish Jacobean Culture.” iScot Magazine, March 2019, 68-75.

Bakker, Anneke. “Esther Inglis and Maurice of Nassau.” Quaerendo, 48:1 (2018) 39-76. [On Folger MS. V.a.93].

Bath, Michael. “A City of Famous Women: Esther Inglis, Georgette de Montenay, and Christine de Pisan.” In Emblems in Scotland: Motifs and Meanings. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2018. 23-55.

Ezell, Margaret J.M. “Invisibility Optics: Aphra Behn, Esther Inglis and the Fortunes of Women’s Works.” In A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 27-45.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “A Recently-Discovered Esther Inglis Manuscript.” The Library, 91:4 (2018), 490-99. [On Folger MS V.a.665].

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Esther Inglis.” The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women. Ed. Elizabeth Ewan, et al. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Ezell, Margaret J.M. “‘Her Book’ and Early Modern Modes of Collaboration.” In Gender, Authorship, and Early Modern Women’s Collaboration, ed. Patricia Pender, Alexandra Day, Margaret E.M. Ezell. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 245-58.

Inglis, Kirsten. “‘Delivered at Second Hand’: Translation, Gifting and the Politics of Authorship in Tudor Women’s Writing.” Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of English, University of Calgary, January 2014. [Chap. 5 on Esther Inglis’s translation of Montenay’s Emblemes.]

Barker, Nicolas. Introduction and appendices. Esther Inglis’s Les Proverbes De Salomon, a facsimile. The Roxburghe Club, 2012.

Frye, Susan. Pens and Needles: women’s textualities in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Dabbs, Julia K. Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550-1800: An Anthology. London: Routledge, 2009. 288-95. Dabbs and others present historic lives of women artists from various countries, most written by men, with commentary. Chapter 20 on Inglis reproduces George Ballard’s (1706-1755) life of her with a modern introduction.

Ross, Sarah Gwyneth. “Esther Inglis: Linguist, Calligrapher, Miniaturist, and Christian Humanist.” In Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Ed. Julie D. Campbell and Ann R. Larsen. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009. 159-181.

Van Elk, Martine. “Courtliness, Piety, and Politics: Emblem Books by Georgette de Montenay, Anna Roemers Visscher, and Esther Inglis.” In Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Ed. Julie D. Campbell and Ann R. Larsen. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009. 183-210.

Kemp, Theresa D. “Women’s Patronage-Seeking as Familial Enterprise: Aemilia Lanyer, Esther Inglis, and Mary Wroth,” Literature Compass 4:2 (2007) 384-406.

Tucker, Marie-Claude. “From Georgette de Montenay’s Emblemes ou Devises Chretiennes (1571, 1619) to Esther Inglis’s Emblemes Chrétiens (1624). In Rhetoric, Royalty, and Reality: Essays on the Literary Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland. Ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald and Kees Dekker. Leuven: Peeters, 2005. 165-95.

Bracher, Tricia. “Esther Inglis and the English Succession Crisis of 1599.” In Women and Politics in Early Modern England. Ed. James Daybell. Aldershot, Hamp., England: Ashgate, 2004. 132-146.

Frye, Susan. “Materializing Authorship in Esther Inglis’s Books.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32:3 (Fall 2002) 469-491.

Giles, Pamela B. “Scottish Literary Women, 1560-1700.” Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of English, University of Saskatchewan, 2004. See especially pp. 91-98.

Bakker, Anneke. “Dame Flora’s Blossoms: Esther Inglis’s Flower-Illustrated Manuscripts.” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700. Vol. 9. Ed. Peter Beal and Margaret Ezell. London: British Library, 2000. 49-72.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Hand-Ma[i]de Books: the Manuscripts of Esther Inglis, Early-modern Precursors of the Artists’ Book.” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700. Vol. 9. Ed. Peter Beal and Margaret Ezell. London: British Library, 2000. 73-87.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “‘More than Feminine Boldness: the Gift Books of Esther Inglis.” In Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. Ed. Mary Burke, et al. NY: Syracuse UP, 2000. 19-37.

Lange, Thomas. “A Rediscovered Esther Inglis Calligraphic Manuscript in the Huntington Library.” PBSA 89:3 (Sept. 1995), 339-42. [Lange misidentified the woman in the emblem; it is Marie Stewart, Countess of Mar, not Mary Queen of Scots. See article cited above: Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis: A Franco-Scottish Jacobean Writer and Her Octonaries Upon the Vanity and Inconstancie of the World.” Studies in Scottish Literature, 48.2 (2023) 55, fn12. https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol48/iss2/ ]

Saunders, Alison. “Montenay comes to Edinburgh,” in The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Tradition and Variety. Ed. Alison Adams and A.J. Harper, Leiden: Brill, 1992. 132-53.

Scott-Elliot, A.H. and Elspeth Yeo, “Calligraphic Manuscripts of Esther Inglis (1571-1624): A Catalogue,” PBSA, 84:1 (March 1990) 11-86.

Goldberg, Jonathan. Writing Matters: From the Hands of the English Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. 146-153.

Williams, Robert. “A Moon to Their Sun: Writing Mistresses of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Fine Print 11 (1985): 88-98.

Jackson, Dorothy Judd. Esther Inglis Calligrapher 1571-1624. New York: Spiral Press, 1937.

Laing, David. “Notes Relating to Mrs Esther (Langlois or) Inglis . . . ,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 6. Edinburgh: Neill and Company, 1868. 284-309.

Works in Progress

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Lace, Letters, and the Calligraphic Manuscripts of Esther Inglis,” in Gender and the Book Trades, ed. E. Watson and J. Farrell-Jobst. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming, 2024.