Select Bibliography

Web Essays (date: new to old)

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.

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

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.

Ziegler, Georgianna. “Esther Inglis.” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World. (Forthcoming, print and virtual).

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. Includes a textual edition of the Octonaries. (Forthcoming, 2023).

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

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis’s Discours de la foy and her ‘portrait 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 in French with translation, notes, and Appendix, 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.

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.

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.

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 Jamie Reid-Baxter, “Esther Ingis’ poetic paratexts: sonnets by ‘G.D.’ and Velde,” Studies in Scottish Literature, forthcoming.]

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.” Submitted for publication, 2021.

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis: a Franco-Scottish glory of Jacobean Scotland.” Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. Forthcoming.

Reid Baxter, Jamie. “Esther Inglis’ poetic paratexts: Sonnets by ‘G.D.’ and Velde.” Studies in Scottish Literature. Forthcoming.