Overview

'A really thrilling discovery . . . This is a real extension of our knowledge of women of the period, engagingly told' - Philippa Gregory 'It held me captive from the first page to the last. Utterly breathtaking' - Tracy Borman The youngest of the Maitland siblings, Marie had watched her elder sisters be married off one by one, destined to take up the unavoidable path for women in sixteenth-century Scotland. However, as she neared marrying age, her father, an influential judge, poet and Keeper of the Privy Seal under Mary, Queen of Scots, went blind and suddenly needed someone to act as his scribe and secretary. In taking up this role, Marie indeed avoided the unavoidable, dedicating her life to her father's work. After his death, she put the finishing touches on the Maitland Quarto, long recognised as significant for its preservation of the poetry of the male great-and-good of sixteenth-century Scotland. A rare feat for a woman at the time, but Marie's story doesn't stop there. For hidden in the pages of the Maitland Quarto, historian and translator Ashley Douglas discovered Marie's own secret lesbian love poetry. Penning such poetry in the hostile climate of post-Reformation Scotland, with its suffocating tightening of moral control over society, was an incredible act of bravery. Unable to sign it directly, Marie, insistent on her voice and love being known, littered the manuscript with clues to its true penmanship. Clues that, until now, have remained unseen. Building on her initial discovery of Marie's poetry, in With My Own Hand Ashley Douglas draws on a vast range of newly unearthed primary historical records to tell the fascinating story of Marie and her manuscript, in full, for the very first time.

Full Product Details

9781035449163

Table of Contents

Reviews

Absolutely mesmerising, Douglas's meticulously detailed research reveals a fascinating story that's been lost for centuries Though a work of non-fiction, this is a teasing and tantalising historical drama, beautifully written by Douglas With My Own Hand is a necessary act of queer historical reclamation. In recovering Marie Maitland from the margins of manuscript culture, Ashley Douglas does more than reconstruct a life: she demonstrates that women's same-sex desire was part of the lived and articulated reality of the early modern world. At a time when the legitimacy of queer lives is again contested in public discourse, this return to a sixteenth-century woman who loved women feels not antiquarian but urgent. The power of the book lies in its archival seriousness, in its patient reading of documents, contexts and silences, and in its refusal to allow women's desire to be footnoted or euphemised out of history. This is not simply biography; it is the restoration of a lineage. Douglas reminds us that queer history survives not by accident, but because someone chooses to look for it. An important and timely contribution to the history of women who loved women Set against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent periods in Scottish history, this is the story of forbidden but enduring love, of the strength of the female spirit in a world dominated by men, and above all of an extraordinary woman far ahead of her time. It held me captive from the first page to the last. Utterly breathtaking Engaging, evocative, enthralling: Ashley Douglas shines a light on a part of Scotland's history - and a fascinating Scotswoman - too often overlooked or not even written in The joy of this book, for me, is its vivid evocation of a secret love story - a love story between women in the sixteenth century. It has all the drama and complexity of the best romances. Ashley Douglas has created a clear and accessible narrative that takes us right into the thoughts and feelings of Marie Maitland, allowing us to see and experience as she did, over a gap of hundreds of years. The academic rigour with which Ashley Douglas has researched her story clearly establishes a truth too often obscured by the ignorance and biases of earlier historians. Women have always loved other women, romantically and sexually. Queer love has been part of human history as long as humans have existed. But centuries of homophobic assumptions mean that truth is still disputed. Ashley Douglas uses original source material, without speculation, to demonstrate a love that cannot, now, be denied or argued out of existence. By the end we feel certain that this is only the tip of an iceberg of untold historical love stories that might be found if others looked with the same energy and meticulous care A really thrilling discovery - a sixteenth-century woman writing, and she's a professional clerk, and she's a poet, and she's writing love letters to another woman and she's Scots. This is a real extension of our knowledge of women of the period, engagingly told -- Philippa Gregory

Author Information

Ashley Douglas is a Scottish historian and translator. Ashley has two master's degrees - one in Scottish Historical Studies from the University of St Andrews and another in Archaeology from the University of the Highlands and Islands. Since graduating in 2016, Ashley has developed a national profile and successful freelance career as a translator, historian, speaker and consultant, specialising in LGBT history and the Scots language. She has worked with and written for a range of national heritage, literary and educational organisations, including the National Library of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Time for Inclusive Education, and Scottish National Galleries. In 2023, Ashley was named as one of the '15 most influential women in culture' in Scotland in a list created to mark International Women's Day. In 2024, she consulted on Katherine: James V, the latest instalment in Rona Munro's acclaimed The James Plays series; she is currently consulting on James VI, which will be staged in 2027. Ashley is the author of the essay My Sapphic City, which was published as part of the anthology who will be remembered here (Historic Environment Scotland, 2025). She is also the author of The Lass and The Quine (2025), the first ever original LGBT inclusive children's book in the Scots language.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available