WITH MY OWN HAND: THE SECRET LIFE OF MARIE MAITLAND (HB)

In sixteenth-century Scotland, Marie Maitland's father was an influential judge, poet and Keeper of the Privy Seal under Mary, Queen of Scots but he went blind and suddenly needed someone to act as his scribe and secretary. In taking up this role, Marie avoided the inevitable fate of marriage, 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. However, hidden in the pages of that work, historian and translator Ashley Douglas discovered Marie's own secret lesbian love poetry. Unable to sign such dangerous material directly, Marie littered the manuscript with clues to its true penmanship. Building on her initial discovery of Marie's poetry, Ashley Douglas draws on a vast range of newly unearthed primary historical records to tell the remarkable story of Marie for the very first time.