Esther Inglis, 1570-1624 : Franco-Scottish Creative Woman

The life story of Esther Inglis, a French Huguenot refugee and one of the most creative women working in early modern Britain.

Esther Inglis was a calligrapher, artist, embroiderer, translator and poet, and the first woman in Scotland or England to include a self-portrait with her works. She developed a career making gift manuscripts, in partnership with her husband Bartilmo Kello – intelligencer and clergyman – that brought her into the political realm. She is important to Scottish religious and literary history as part of the network of theologians and humanists, including Andrew Melville, John Johnston and Robert Rollock. The careers of Esther Inglis and her husband exemplify those of Scots who travelled to England with King James VI and I, returning again when their personal lives became untenable in the south. Her life as professional woman and mother to nine children, as set out in this book, sheds new light on this important transitional Jacobean period of British history. The book also contextualises Inglis and her French refugee family within the Scottish, English and European courts and politics of the time.