The Esther Inglis project has been gathering momentum behind the scenes, with plans now in place for an international colloquium, an online exhibition taking shape, many new digitisations of Esther Inglis’ manuscripts which can soon be shared, and several academic conference papers having brought Esther Inglis’ work to new networks and scholarly audiences.
Title-page to Esther Inglis’ English Octonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, translated from the French originals by Antoine de la Roche Chandieu. Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.91
For those who are already in Edinburgh, there are two events relating to Esther Inglis and her manuscripts taking place in August, both with a focus on the music which surrounded Inglis in Jacobean Scotland, and the songs which shaped her calligraphic and artistic practices. Music was an important influence on Esther Inglis’ early construction of herself as a woman artist and writer; in her earliest self-portraits she depicts herself at her writing-desk together with a lute and an open book of music, following the 1567 portrait of the French Huguenot poet, Georgette de Montenay (1540-1581), from which Inglis works.
Self-portrait by Esther Inglis (1599), and engraved portrait of Georgette de Montenay (1567) by Pierre Woeiriot. Bodleian Library, MS 990
On the 17th August, the beautiful Gothic space of St Vincent’s Chapel will host “Nil Penna Sed Usus: A Quartercentenary Event for Esther Inglis”. This immersive event will have two parts; the first will be a recital by the Sacred Arts Festival Singers, directed by Calum Robertson. The Festival Singers will perform selections from the works of Antoine de Chandieu and Guy du Faur. Chandieu’s Octonaires sur la vanité et inconstance du monde, and du Faur’s Quatrains are works of devotional poetry which Esther Inglis copied frequently into her own calligraphic manuscripts.
Octo XXIV from Antoine de la Roche Chandieu’s Octonaires sur la vanite et inconstance du monde, with facing English translation by Esther Inglis Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.91 (1600)
Of her 63 known books, 26 contain copies of these religious verses; either their French originals, or (in three cases) English translations of Chandieu’s Octonaires which Esther Inglis composed herself. Of these 26 mansucripts, 9 are made in Esther Inglis’ floral, illuminated style, embellished with painted botanical imagery and the verses copied in her characteristically wide range of calligraphic scripts. These devotional verses were set to music within Esther Inglis’ lifetime; settings of the Quatrains de Guy du Faur by Paschal de l’Estocart were published in 1582, for example, while Claude le Jeune (1530-1600) composed settings for Chandieu’s Octonaires.
1641 publication of Claude le Jeune’s settings of the Octonaires sur la vanite et inconstance du monde, originally written by Antoine de la Roche Chandieu
Selections of these settings will be performed in St Vincent’s chapel, together with a series of metrical psalms and canticles which would have been sung in the services attended by Esther Inglis and her Scottish and French contemporaries. The second part of this event, taking place in the undercroft of the chapel, will be an introduction to the manuscripts of Esther Inglis, with particular focus on her copies of the verses which have been set to music. The result will be an immersive, multimedia event in which to understand the aural world which surrounds Esther Inglis’ work.
The second musical event, on the 30th August, will take place at South Leith Parish Church, a medieval church now 533 years old. This location must be close to where Esther Inglis herself lived; she died at Leith on the 30th August 2024. The event is entitled “In My Maker’s Book”, a line from the Nine Haiku for Esther Inglis written by Gerda Stevenson. These Nine Haiku have now been set to music by Sheena Phillips, and this event will offer the world-premiere performance of this newly-commissioned work, performed by Sally Carr (soprano), Juliette Philogene (piano) and Calum Robertson (clarinet and bass clarinet). Again directed by Calum Robertson, the Sacred Arts Festival Chorus will also perform musical pieces from Esther Inglis’ lifetime, including selections of the metrical Psalms, and further settings of the Octonaires sur la vanitie et inconstance du monde and the Quatrains de Guy du Faur.
For further details of this unique concert, please see the Eventbrite page.
The University of Edinburgh is delighted to invite proposals for a colloquium on the contexts and cultures surrounding the work of Esther Inglis (c.1570-1624), which will be held at the University of Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th October 2024. Guest speakers will include Dr Georgianna Ziegler (Folger Shakespeare Library) and Dr Jamie Reid Baxter (University of Glasgow)
Esther Inglis (c.1570-1624) is a uniquely important scribe, writer and artist.
Escapingreligious persecution in France, she and her family moved briefly to England before settling in Edinburgh during her early childhood; here she acquired the skills in calligraphy, drawing, and embroidery that combined to create the extraordinary manuscript books for which she is still famed. Inglis was highly praised as a scribe in her own day, sometimes called the ‘mistress of the golden pen’, and the regard in which her skills were held allowed her books to play a role in the pursuit of personal, religious and political interests. Inglis’s work is not unfamiliar to both academic and wider audiences today, and she continues to inspire contemporary writers and artists. But much remains to be done to understand the multiple forces and contexts which shaped her activity and her singular place within the culture of her time — from her relationship with Scottish politics, to her experience as a Huguenot refugee.
In the quatercentenary of her death, the University of Edinburgh, with the support of the University of Leiden, is hosting a colloquium on the 19th and 20th October 2024, to bring together researchers working on any aspect of Esther Inglis’s life and work, and on any of the crafts, media and cultural contexts in which she worked.
We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers in any of the following areas of early modern study relevant to Inglis:
Scribal culture and manuscript production in an age of print
The practice of book making
Art and the making and giving of gifts
Craft skills and cultural production
Religious and/or cultural politics in early modern Scotland, France, and England
Women’s writing and women’s authorship
Translation and transmediation
Transnationality and the culture and politics of refuge
Proposals (max 200 words) should be sent to Inglis400@ed.ac.uk by 30th June 2024.
This colloquium is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 864635, FEATHERS).Read more about the project here. This colloquium is organised in collaboration with the ongoing “Esther Inglis 2024” project at Edinburgh University Library.
Images copyright Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and Folger Shakespeare Library, licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0; copyright National Library of Scotland, reproduced with permission.
This blog post introduces the six manuscripts written by and associated with Esther Inglis which are held at Edinburgh University Library. The cataloguing, conservation, and digitisation of this manuscript group forms an important output of “Esther Inglis 2024”. This post is written by the Project Curator.
Today, sixty-three manuscripts by Esther Inglis are known worldwide. This number includes manuscripts which are currently held in libraries or in private collections. It also includes manuscripts which are recorded in older auction catalogues or described in historical records. The total of sixty-three known Esther Inglis manuscripts is the highest it has ever been, but this number is constantly shifting. In 2012, two manuscripts previously considered Esther Inglis’ work were de-attributed in a new catalogue drawn up by Nicolas Barker. These manuscripts are now thought to be compilations of sixteenth-century calligraphic pieces which were gathered together by later owners. One of these manuscripts is in the National Library of Scotland — MS 2197. The other is MS La.III.522, held by the University of Edinburgh. So where did this original attribution to Esther Inglis come from, and how does it relate to the other five manuscripts in the University which she definitely did write?
The six Inglis-related manuscripts at the University of Edinburgh all came to the Library at the bequest of David Laing (1793-1878). Laing was a Scottish antiquary, a collector of manuscripts and a bibliographer. At his death, Laing left his manuscript collection to the University; the Laing collection is the largest single manuscript collection in the University Library. Laing was an important early collector of Esther Inglis’ manuscripts; in 1865, he published “Notes relating to Mrs Esther (Langlois or) Inglis, the celebrated calligraphist” in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland. Today, this extensive article continues to be cited by modern scholars as a source of bibliographical information not only for Esther Inglis, but also for her father Nicolas Anglois, husband Bartilmo Kello, and father-in-law John Kello. Laing’s article also describes 28 manuscripts by Inglis which he has either seen, heard of, or owns. Five of the six Inglis-related manuscripts now at the University of Edinburgh are included in this list; these are: MS La.III.440, MS La.III.439, MS La.III.75, MS La.III.525, MS La.III.522.
David Laing continued to collect manuscripts by Inglis after publishing his 1865 article; the manuscript now MS La.III.249 includes a note in Laing’s handwriting to say that he acquired it in 1867. The rest of this blog post will introduce this group of six manuscripts, which form the part of the core of the “Esther Inglis 2024” project.
Read on to meet the manuscripts…
La.III.440
This is one of Esther Inglis’ earliest dated manuscripts, produced in 1592. It contains the text of the hundred verses entitled De la grandeur de Dieu et de la cognoissance qu’on peur avoir de luy par ses oeuvres [On the greatness of God, and on the knowledge that one can have of him through his works], originally written by Pierre du Val and published as a printed book in 1553. Forty years after this first publication, Esther Inglis’ copies of these verses are intricate and decorative; she rewrites these hundred verses in twenty different styles of script, which vary dramatically in size and ornamentation. Esther Inglis’ manuscript has an oblong format; this is unusual for its time, but is likely to reference the shape of sixteenth-century handwriting manuals or “writing books”, which were designed to be laid flat on a table. However, Inglis’ manuscript measures just 9 by 12 centimetres, much smaller than any writing-book she might have seen. This little book draws its viewer in to new worlds of writing, through which to read the wonders of creation described within its text.
La.III.525
This manuscript is an example of a “friendship album”, or album amicorum, kept by the Edinburgh-born George Craig. An album amicorum collects signatures or inscriptions by individuals, perhaps friends of the album’s owner, or those who the owner met on their travels. On the 8th August 1604, Bartilmo Kello and Esther Inglis both added inscriptions to Craig’s album while they were in London. These inscriptions are facing each other, and offer a striking comparison between the scribal hands of husband and wife.
Folios 7v-8r of MS La.III.525
La.III.249
This manuscript is a rare example of Esther Inglis working on a scribal commission; it is a copy of of Book 2 of the Latin ‘Treatise on Union’ composed by David Hume of Godscroft (1558-c.1630). Written in 1605, the manuscript is a presentation copy which Hume may have intended to present to King James VI/I and Prince Henry Frederick, as the dedicatees of this work. Although her name is not written in this manuscript, Esther Inglis’ calligraphy is clear from both the quality of its script, and her subtle floral decoration.
Title-page of MS La.III.249
La.III.439
This manuscript, produced by Esther Inglis in 1606, contains a copy of the popular religious and moral Quatrains written by Guy du Faur, Seigneur de Pybrac. In 1607, Inglis gave her manuscript as a gift for the New Year to Robert Cecil (1563-1612), 1st Earl of Salisbury. Like many of the books made by Inglis between 1600 and 1608, this manuscript has a richly illuminated title-page with a floral border (see this blog post), and each of its calligraphic verses would originally have been accompanied by individual botanical decorations. This particular manuscript of Quatrains, however, has been subject to the collecting or collaging activities of a later reader; with just four exceptions, all of these botanical decorations within the main text have been cut out. The manuscript makes for a fascinating record of the changing value judgements which have been placed upon this miniature book in the centuries after its production.
La.III.75
This manuscript is a collaborative production between Esther Inglis and her husband, Bartilmo Kello. The couple produced this manuscript in 1608 as a gift for Sir David Murray of Gorthy, thanking him for having secured the position of rector for Bartilmo Kello in the parish of Willingale Spain, in Essex. The text is Kello’s English translation of Yves Rouspeau’s Traitté de la préparation à la saincte Cène de Nostre seul Sauveur et Rédempteur (1563); Kello titles his version A Treatise of Preparation to the Holy Supper and of our only Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ. Esther Inglis copies this text into her manuscript in scripts which closely imitate a printed book. Part of the intrigue of this manuscript lies in its print-like appearance, from its words to its layout, and this replication (or perfecting) of print is a technique which Inglis continues to develop across her career.
Title-page of MS La.III.75
La.III.522
MS La.III.522 is not written by Esther Inglis herself, but instead is a composite manuscript of pieces assembled by a later collector. It contains several different collections of calligraphy samples now bound into one. Two of these collections follow the aspect and structure of early-modern writing-books; two decorative alphabet structure samples of writing in different kinds of script. One of these decorative alphabets is composed of gothic, knotwork intials, as shown below. Scripts and decoration are embellished with gold ink; these writing-books were presumably not produced as teaching samples, but to demonstrate the skills of particular writing masters.
Gothic initials accompanying the calligraphy samples in MS La.III.522
These alphabetised calligraphy samples, however, have since been bound with other materials. Nicolas Barker’s suggestion is that the compilation was made by Archibald Constable, whose son David Constable (1795-1857) later sold the manuscript to David Laing on the 18th December 1828. None of the items in the manuscript are dated, but several names of possible scribes appear. One section of its calligraphic pieces bears the name Jacques Dorsanne, and is dedicated to Philippe de Mornay (1549-1623), a Huguenot writer and supporter of Henry IV of France. Two further pieces, meanwhile, are signed by a William Geddie (d. 1624), a scribe who worked “at Barnetoun” [Barnton], in the outskirts of Edinburgh.
Ornamental frame and miniature writing by “M.W.Gedde” (William Geddie), MS La.III.522
As Jamie Reid Baxter has shown, it is very likely that William Geddie was a relative of John Geddie, a scribe connected with the court of James VI. John Geddie is known to have copied a manuscript of George Buchanan’s poem De Sphaera [On the Sphere], which then passed to William Geddie. David Laing certainly thought that there was a connection between these two scribes; on the inner cover of this manuscript, he has added a transcription of a record from the 8th May 1577, which awards a yearly pension from George Buchanan to “his lovit Mr Johne Geddy”. As Jamie Reid Baxter and others have noticed, there are in turn clear connections between the style of decoration used in a presentation manuscript made by John Geddie for James VI in 1586, and the decorative borders and initials found in Esther Inglis’ own manuscripts produced between 1599 and 1602. This connection strongly suggests that Inglis herself knew John Geddie, and both Geddie scribes may have been part of her circle in late sixteenth-century Edinburgh.
Signature and inscription of David Laing on inner front cover, MS La.III.522
When David Laing published his description of this manuscript in 1865, he also noted the presence of one important document bound into the collection which has sadly since been lost. This document is a draft “warrant” which, had it ever been signed, would have appointed Bartilmo Kello to the position of “clerk of all passports” under King James VI/I. The text of this warrant also makes reference to “the mest exquisit wreater [writer] within this Realme” who was to assist in the writing of official documents under King James — Esther Inglis herself. The fact that Inglis herself is not named directly strongly suggests that her writing was already known within royal circles. By 1596-7, when this warrant is likely to have been drafted, neither she nor her calligraphy needed any introduction.
The presence of this draft warrant, together with the calligraphic nature of the rest of the items bound within this manuscript, presumably combined to invite David Laing’s attribution of MS La.III.522 to Esther Inglis in his 1865 “Notes” — an attribution which endured for the next 147 years. But the question remains whether the subsequent deattribution of this manuscript decreases its value or scholarly interest. And does this deattribution mean that MS La.III.522 has become less significant for the work of the “Esther Inglis 2024” project?
Far from it. As Project Curator, my own view is that Esther Inglis’ calligraphy can only be fully understood or appreciated when it is set alongside the productions of other scribes working in similar circles. MS La.III.522 contains the handwriting of other scribes working in and around Edinburgh at the same time as Inglis. How else can audiences measure the differences of what Inglis herself writes and draws, the influences which she calls upon, and the artists or writers to which she responds, if her work is not examined alongside the productions of these wider contexts? The contents and history of MS La.III.522 offer just such a touchstone against which to set Esther Inglis’ own manuscripts, the better to understand the exceptionality of what she, as a rare woman calligrapher known within the royal court, was able to accomplish.
This post explores in further detail the connections between Esther Inglis (c.1570-1624), her family, and the city and University of Edinburgh. This post is written by the project curator, Anna-Nadine Pike, with reference to unpublished research provided by Dr Jamie Reid Baxter (University of Glasgow).
Esther Inglis died on 30th August 1624. Her will, now held in the National Records of Scotland, is dated to the 11th March 1625; it records her death, and describes Inglis as “sometime spouse to Bartilmo Kello, indweller in Leith”. Four hundred years later, 2024 offers a milestone anniversary in which to celebrate and share the work of this unparalleled calligrapher, who deserves far greater recognition within and beyond the city in which so many of her manuscripts were produced. The city of Edinburgh itself plays a significant part in Esther Inglis’ life and manuscripts. From their first arrival in the city as Huguenot refugees, Inglis and her family were immersed in the urban landscape and networks of early modern Edinburgh. In September 1574, as Jamie Reid Baxter has discussed, Inglis’ father Nicolas Langlois became master of the French School in Edinburgh. From the 11th November that year, this post afforded accommodation for him and his family in a house “at the New Well”, owned by Alexander Udwart, close to the modern Guthrie Street which connects Chambers Street to Cowgate. The Burgh Records of Edinburgh for July 1580 note the payment “to Alexander Vddert £10” by the Council, to account for “the hous and schole of the maister of the Frainsche schole, Nicolas Anglois”. The Langlois family had early links with other high-ranking individuals in Edinburgh, including David Lindsay, the minister of Leith, who provided early assistance to Nicolas and Marie Presot on their arrival in the capital.
Esther Inglis’ further integration into the political and social networks of Edinburgh must have followed her marriage to the Scottish clerk Bartilmo Kello, who was a servitor to his kinsmen Bishop Adam Bothwell and his son John, Lord Holyroodhouse. Several of Inglis’ surviving manuscripts are dedicated to members of the Scottish nobility; in 1602, she presents an intricate copy of the books of Ecclesiastes and Lamentations in French to Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll (1575-1638). In a flattering dedication, she describes the many “rares vertus desquelles Dieu et nature se sont forcez d’orner vostre Seigneurie par dessus les autres Princes de vostre aage” [rare virtues with which God and nature have been compelled to adorn your Lordship, above the other Princes of your age]. At least four manuscripts were presented to Scottish men and women in the year 1616 alone: to Robert Frenche, Clerk of Kircaldy, the Archbishop of St Andrews John Spottiswood, to Robert Boyd of Trochrig, and to Boyd’s wife, Anna Maliverne de Lavignolle. The dedicatory letters which Esther Inglis writes, mostly in French, between 1599 and 1602, and again from 1616, are often signed “a Lislebourg” [at Edinburgh] or “de Lislebourg en Ecosse” [from Edinburgh in Scotland]. In this way, her books emphasise their Scottish production, while also retaining Esther Inglis’ own identity as a Frenchwoman who lives and works “en Ecosse”.
The end of Inglis’ dedication to Elizabeth I in a 1599 Book of Psalms. Oxford: Christ Church, MS 180, fol.Vv.
Beyond Inglis’ connections with the city of Edinburgh, however, there is a further significance to “Esther Inglis 2024” taking place within this University. The University of Edinburgh was founded as Tounis College in 1582, opening in 1583, and initially offered just one four-year course, the Master of Arts. The first principal of the University was Robert Rollock (1555-1599), and from August 1587 the graduations of the college began to be recorded. In 1588, one of these graduates was David Inglis, Esther Inglis’ elder brother. It is likely that this is the same “David Inglis” who, in 1588, adds his signature to the First Laureation Album held in the University’s archives.
Laureation Degrees for 1588 (First Laureation Album). Edinburgh University Archives, EUA IN1/ADS/STA/1/1
Robert Rollock is also one of several Scottish individuals who composes neo-Latin verses in praise of Esther Inglis’ calligraphy; Inglis copies such laudatory verses by Rollock into her manuscripts between 1599 and 1606, and again in 1624. One such example is this four-line verse, included in Inglis’ 1599 Book of Psalms for Queen Elizabeth I. Rollock compares Inglis to the classical Greek artist Apelles who was famed for his ability to paint the finest line possible:
Egregiam peperit laudem sibi pictor Apelles Caelatur Calamis arte etiam meruit Tu calamo Calamin superas pictura et Apellem Psalmographi pingens Davidis Ester opus.
[The painter Apelles won great praise for himself
It is engraved that, by the art of the pen, he also deserved it
You, Esther, by the pen surpass the pen, and surpass Apelles in depiction
Depicting the work of the psalm-writer David.]
Poem by Robert Rollock in praise of Esther Inglis. Oxford: Christ Church, MS 180, fol.VIIv.
Robert Rollock writes further epigrammatic verses which are dedicated to the specific recipients of some of Inglis’ manuscripts; he writes a verse in praise of Robert Earl of Essex to be included in the Book of Proverbs which Inglis dedicates to Essex in 1599. He also writes a verse for Elizabeth I, for Inglis’ 1599 Psalms, and another for Anthony Bacon, the dedicatee of Inglis’ copy of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, also in 1599.
Even prior to his offering of these verses, however, Robert Rollock seems to have have established a yet closer relationship with both Inglis and Kello. This is suggested by his appointment as a witness to the baptism of Samuel Kello on the 13th March 1596 — a role which, Jamie Reid Baxter notes, is equivalent to a godfather. Samuel was baptised with his twin sister, Agnes, about whom, sadly, nothing else is presently known.
Samuel Kello is later seen to have followed in the footsteps of his uncle, David Inglis, in attending Edinburgh’s Tounis College. He matriculated at the University in 1615, and in 1617 is described as Academiae Edinburgensis Alumno on the title-page of a printed collection of poems which he authored and dedicated to James VI/I. The shortened title of this volume is Carmen gratulatorium [a song of congratulations], published by the Edinburgh printer Andro Hart.
The University of Edinburgh, then can be seen as a truly fitting place in which to celebrate the manuscripts and life of Esther Inglis, and the circles in which she moved. The newly-founded University played an important part in the lives of Inglis’ relations, soon after their arrival in the city. The Inglis-Kello family later establish a lasting connection with Robert Rollock, its first principle, whose personalised verses seem to integrate Inglis’ calligraphic manuscripts into his own early-modern scholarly network. The city of Edinburgh itself is woven into the impression of authorial identity which is found in Esther Inglis’ early manuscripts, and becomes a place to which she returns in later life. Four hundred years later, the University of Edinburgh is working to ensure that the impression which Esther Inglis and her family left upon this city in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not forgotten.
Esther Inglis’ Discours de la Foy, 1591, with “Escrit a Lislebourg” on its title-page. San Marino: Huntington Library, HM 26068.
This post is written by Anna-Nadine Pike, Project Curator of “Esther Inglis 2024”. Alongside this position, Anna is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Kent’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Read more about Anna’s doctoral research here.
Welcome to the new blog for “Esther Inglis 2024”. This project will run at Edinburgh University Library throughout 2024, to mark 400 years since the death of Esther Inglis (c.1570-1624). Esther Inglis was a remarkable calligrapher, author, artist, and manuscript-maker of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, who for much of her life was based in Edinburgh. The intention of the project is to raise Esther Inglis’ profile, nationally and internationally, bringing her story to new and varied audiences. The project will mark Esther’s quatercentenary by celebrating the life and work of this exceptional woman, and locating her scribal and artistic productions within a broader cultural heritage, in Scotland and beyond. This blog will be a place to record the progress of the project, while also providing space for guest posts, wider discussions, and spotlights on particular elements of Inglis’ work. As Project Curator of “Esther Inglis 2024”, my primary output will be the development of an online exhibition which will tell Inglis’ story, and situate her work within wider cultural and historical contexts. The exhibition will bring together digital manifests of the Inglis’ manuscripts which are currently held in libraries and institutions throughout the world. The hope is for the exhibition to become a lasting scholarly and public resource, through which Esther’s story and her books can be known more widely.
In this first post, it seems fitting to introduce Esther Inglis, with an outline of her life and her manuscripts.
Esther Inglis, Octonaries upon the vanitie and inconstancie of the world, 1600. Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.91, fol. 2.
Esther Inglis was the daughter of French Huguenot refugees, Nicolas Langlois and Marie Presot, who emigrated from Dieppe to Britain close to 1570, to escape religious persecution. The family moved first to London, and then settled in Edinburgh, where Nicolas Langlois became master of the French school. Esther Inglis’ first surviving manuscript dates to 1586, when she was around 16 years old, and is a copy of two Psalms written in five different kinds of script. Her ability to work in multiple different forms of writing would come to distinguish her as a scribe. Across Esther’s corpus, her range of scripts includes letters which are reversed, zigzagging, or interlaced, miniature writing, and imitation of print. Marie Presot was a calligrapher, and it is likely that she first taught her daughter how to write. But Esther also learned her forms of writing from several ‘writing-manuals’, a genre of early-modern manuscript or printed books produced as teaching tools. These books provide examples of different handwriting styles, with sample-texts to copy from. Such books were produced throughout Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Esther seems to have used those particularly produced by French writing-masters: Pierre Hamon’s Alphabet de plusieurs sortes de lettres (1567), and ABooke containing diverse sortes of handes (1571) by Jean de Beauchesne, another Huguenot scribe working in London. In total, 65 manuscripts produced by Esther Inglis are known today. For a woman working in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this is an astonishing quantity of surviving works, and there are likely to be others; many new manuscripts by Esther Inglis have come to light since scholarly interest in her work was revived in the late twentieth century.
Nearly all of Esther Inglis’ manuscripts are bound books, and many of these were produced as gifts, which were presented to their chosen recipients with the probable hope of patronage. The vast majority contain devotional texts — either texts copied from the Geneva Bible, works of paraphrase, or other religious verse. As an author as well as a scribe, Inglis also composed some of the works which she copies into her manuscripts; she was bilingual in French and Anglo-Scots. Close to one-third of Inglis’ corpus is composed of floral, illuminated manuscripts; many of her manuscripts are truly miniature; others imitate different kinds of early-modern printed book with an accuracy that makes it hard to believe these are truly works of the pen. The variety and richness of Inglis’ manuscripts becomes a challenge when seeking to do justice to her corpus, but the hope is for “Esther Inglis 2024” to assist in celebrating the range of her skills and the interweaving of the many different influences which are brought together within the books she makes.
Esther Inglis, Les Quatrains du Sieur de Pybrac, 1607. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Library, MS La.III.439, fol. 1.
As the project will also emphasise, Esther Inglis was deeply integrated into the social, political, religious, and textual cultures of early-modern Edinburgh. Around 1596, Esther married a Scotsman named Bartilmo or Bartholomew Kello (c.1564-1631), who trained within the Scottish Kirk and who was part of the spy network surrounding Anthony Bacon (1558-1601). Esther Inglis’ involvement not only with the royal court of King James VI, but also with networks of scholars, literary authors, religious reformers, and other scribes working in Edinburgh and its surroundings, will all become central focus-points of the research underpinning this project.
As the project gets underway, an important first step is facilitating the digitisation of the six Esther Inglis manuscripts held in Edinburgh University Library, so that they can be included in the project’s online exhibition. These Inglis manuscripts were all once owned by the Scottish antiquary David Laing, an important early collector of Esther Inglis’ work. In preparation for this digitisation, I have been working on fuller descriptions of these Edinburgh-held manuscripts. A sample of this work can be seen here, while the full range of the Inglis-associated manuscripts held in Edinburgh University Library can be found here. Ahead of their digitisation, several of these manuscripts will require some conservation work, and I hope to share this process on the blog as the work progresses in the next few months.
Esther Inglis, Livret Traittant de la Grandeur de Dieu…, 1592. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Library, MS La.III.440, fol. 2.
If you would like to hear more about the research, discoveries, and progress of “Esther Inglis 2024”, make sure to follow its social media channels; the project can currently be found on Instagram and on X. And for the most up-to-date record of Esther Inglis’ known manuscripts, see the listing compiled here by Dr Georgianna Ziegler (Folger Shakespeare Library).
Unknown, Esther Inglis, 1569 – 1624. Calligrapher and miniaturist, 1595. Copyright National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
