Inglis, Esther

Esther Inglis (also Langlois, Anglois) (c. 1570–1624), was a Franco-Scottish calligrapher, author, and artist. Inglis’s parents were Huguenots who emigrated to Scotland to escape religious persecution; her mother was a calligrapher and her father was a schoolmaster, and both were known within the court of James VI/I. Inglis produced a remarkable corpus of manuscripts across her career; many of these were made as gifts for noble, royal, or distinguished Protestant individuals, presented in the hope of patronage. Inglis’s manuscripts are often miniature, containing devotional texts, and many are written in multiple different scripts. Inglis presents herself as a woman of multiple, nuanced identities. Her books position her as a scribe, a miniaturist, a devout Calvinist, a member of scholarly intellectual circles, and a woman uniquely situated within the artistic and intellectual spaces of early modern Scotland and England. At once the work of a calligrapher and an author, Inglis’s manuscripts draw together the crafts of hand and mind. If the term “writer” signifies both the composer of texts, and the one who inscribes them, Inglis can be understood as a writer in the fullest sense.