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With My Own Hand: The secret life of Marie Maitland, Scotland’s sixteenth-century Sappho
'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.
'With My Own Hand is a beautiful tribute to a woman lost to time, a work of history as courageous as its subject . . . Douglas has given us a gift in these pages. We need more historians like her' - Leah Redmond Chang
'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.
'With My Own Hand is a beautiful tribute to a woman lost to time, a work of history as courageous as its subject . . . Douglas has given us a gift in these pages. We need more historians like her' - Leah Redmond Chang
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First published July 16, 2026
About the author
Ashley Douglas
7 books1 followerAshley Douglas is a Scottish historian, translator and author, specialising in LGBT+ history and the Scots language.
Douglas created the Scots language option for the Firefox browser.
Douglas created the Scots language option for the Firefox browser.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 9, 2026
Wonderful biography of a fascinating woman!!!
Ashley Douglas has done an amazing job at uncovering the life of Scotland's sixteenth century Sappho. Marie Maitland is such a fascinating historical figure to read about and her biography is handled with so much care and love that you cannot help be in awe that such a person existed in that historical context.
If you like reading nonfiction, specially biographies, you need to check this book out.
Ashley Douglas has done an amazing job at uncovering the life of Scotland's sixteenth century Sappho. Marie Maitland is such a fascinating historical figure to read about and her biography is handled with so much care and love that you cannot help be in awe that such a person existed in that historical context.
If you like reading nonfiction, specially biographies, you need to check this book out.
July 27, 2026
With My Own Hand by Ashley Douglas is the kind of book I adore: literary analysis and history overlapping completely. It centres on Marie Maitland, a learned, wealthy woman given rare financial independence for most of her lifetime. What began as a compendium of her father’s poetry grew, over years, into something much richer, with her own verse and work by other women woven through it.
Marie is the earliest known author of explicitly lesbian love poetry in Europe since Sappho, and Douglas’s frustration with existing scholarship is clear as past academics were reluctant to suggest Marie’s authorship or the clear eroticism of poem 49. As Douglas puts it - the archive is not neutral. Women’s literacy was restricted, women loving women was outlawed, and writing any of it down was dangerous. Small wonder so much has gone unrecorded or misattributed.
How many women’s stories do you think are still sitting unnamed in archives, waiting for someone to make the case for them? Let me know your thoughts below, or tag someone who’d love this one as much as I did.
Thank you to @headlinebooks for an advanced, gifted copy of With My Own Hand for review.
Marie is the earliest known author of explicitly lesbian love poetry in Europe since Sappho, and Douglas’s frustration with existing scholarship is clear as past academics were reluctant to suggest Marie’s authorship or the clear eroticism of poem 49. As Douglas puts it - the archive is not neutral. Women’s literacy was restricted, women loving women was outlawed, and writing any of it down was dangerous. Small wonder so much has gone unrecorded or misattributed.
How many women’s stories do you think are still sitting unnamed in archives, waiting for someone to make the case for them? Let me know your thoughts below, or tag someone who’d love this one as much as I did.
Thank you to @headlinebooks for an advanced, gifted copy of With My Own Hand for review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I completely understand Ashley Douglas's vested interest and why she is so thrilled to have discovered what she reads as lesbian poetry in a sixteenth century manuscript miscellany, and she makes the personal connection to her own life moving and very clear - however, sadly, the claims made in this book are thin with a distinct lack of scholarly evidence, little displayed knowledge of poetry miscellanies of the period, or of early modern poetry itself or women's writing from the period or textual analysis.
Firstly, women's involvement in manuscript miscellanies is not strikingly unusual in the sixteenth century: the Devonshire Manuscript is a prime example of where women from the court of Henry VIII wrote, edited and transcribed poetry into a manuscript which circulated particularly in the Protestant circles around Anne Boleyn. The Devonshire Manuscript, probably circulating in the 1530s, is thus about fifty years earlier than the Maitland Quarto with which this book is concerned and also included male-authored poetry from Thomas Wyatt and other courtly poets as well as some verses most likely (from handwriting analysis) to have been composed and transcribed by women - including verses probably by Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VIII and mother-in-law, via Darnley, to Mary, Queen of Scots. Importantly, however, erotic love poetry was a courtly genre that wasn't necessarily autobiographical (to claim that every Renaissance poetic lament related to real-life heartbreak would be a bit like a historian of the future analysing our literary trends and assuming that we're all serial killers and psychopaths because of our own genre fashions!) - and so the biographical fallacy upon which this book is built i.e. that any love poetry possibly written Marie Maitland was autobiographical and based on her authentic feelings about a real-life female lover is immediately questionable.
Throughout, this suggested story of Marie and her unnamed female lover is hedged with 'might haves', 'could haves', 'may haves': 'Marie might have enjoyed months, even years, of unsuspected intimacy with the relative freedom of two unmarried, elite young women. Whether they first met when...' - only there's no evidence that Marie ever had a love affair with anyone, male or female, especially given the strict upbringing she had in aristocratic circles in sixteenth century Scotland (her brother was William Maitland, Secretary of State to Mary, Queen of Scots). Indeed, other poems in the Maitland Quarto are dedicated to, or written in tribute to, Marie and concentrate on her virtue, modesty, virginity and chastity, all the usual patriarchal qualities associated with a 'good' early modern women.
The fact that at least one poem is written via a female voice to another woman is certainly fascinating in and of itself and scholarly attention elsewhere has legitimately been paid to it; but the overclaiming here and creation of a mythical affair for which we have no evidence is exaggerated in this book. Marie might well have had a sexual affair with a woman, for all we know, but it seems extremely unlikely that if she had, she would reveal it in a family manuscript, a parallel to family bibles that were held within the family and passed through generations. It's also the case that women did have passionate romantic friendships at the time, as did men, and the language of sixteenth century friendship frequently sounds sexual and passionate to our ears: Montaigne, for example, describes how his eyes first met those of his best male friend across a crowded marketplace, and this is completely platonic. That's not to say that Marie definitively didn't fall in love with a woman and write about it, simply that we can't necessarily draw that conclusion from this poem: the text itself compares a female/female relationship to classical examples of male friendship (Achilles and Patroclus who are never described as lovers in Homer), heterosexual marriage (Odysseus and Penelope), and female devotion (the biblical Ruth and Naomi, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law). It's also the case that Sappho was known for her male lovers in the sixteenth century from Ovid's Heroides 15, Sappho to Phaon, so the repeated claiming of Marie's 'sapphic' position is ahistorical as is the category of 'lesbian' when understandings of gender and sexuality in the sixteenth century just didn't map onto our own classifications.
On top of misgivings about the lack of literary contextualisation and knowledge of poetic manuscript culture and analysis, this book retells lots of well-known history based around Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth etc., which is frustrating to have to wade through to get to Marie Maitland herself - conventional histories focus on her father and brother so it's useful to learn more about Marie herself which I appreciated.
Overall, then, there are some interesting poems in this manuscript that could be female authored, even by Marie Maitland, though there isn't a secure attribution. Transcribing your name on a manuscript cover just wasn't a claim to authorship in the period and, indeed, the majority of poems in the Maitland Quarto were written by various men from both within the family and by recognised Scottish and English poets. The overclaiming and probable fictionalisation of a story of a lesbian love affair for which there is no evidence does a disservice to the legitimate literary interest, and ends up being unconvincing in the extreme.
Which is a shame as it would be wonderful to find an authentic lesbian love affair hidden in an early modern manuscript... poetry can, of course, be interpreted in personal ways in individual readings so if some readers want to take that celebratory approach then great - but the historical, cultural and scholarly literary evidence that this theory requires simply isn't there.
Many thanks to Headline for an ARC via NetGalley
Firstly, women's involvement in manuscript miscellanies is not strikingly unusual in the sixteenth century: the Devonshire Manuscript is a prime example of where women from the court of Henry VIII wrote, edited and transcribed poetry into a manuscript which circulated particularly in the Protestant circles around Anne Boleyn. The Devonshire Manuscript, probably circulating in the 1530s, is thus about fifty years earlier than the Maitland Quarto with which this book is concerned and also included male-authored poetry from Thomas Wyatt and other courtly poets as well as some verses most likely (from handwriting analysis) to have been composed and transcribed by women - including verses probably by Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VIII and mother-in-law, via Darnley, to Mary, Queen of Scots. Importantly, however, erotic love poetry was a courtly genre that wasn't necessarily autobiographical (to claim that every Renaissance poetic lament related to real-life heartbreak would be a bit like a historian of the future analysing our literary trends and assuming that we're all serial killers and psychopaths because of our own genre fashions!) - and so the biographical fallacy upon which this book is built i.e. that any love poetry possibly written Marie Maitland was autobiographical and based on her authentic feelings about a real-life female lover is immediately questionable.
Throughout, this suggested story of Marie and her unnamed female lover is hedged with 'might haves', 'could haves', 'may haves': 'Marie might have enjoyed months, even years, of unsuspected intimacy with the relative freedom of two unmarried, elite young women. Whether they first met when...' - only there's no evidence that Marie ever had a love affair with anyone, male or female, especially given the strict upbringing she had in aristocratic circles in sixteenth century Scotland (her brother was William Maitland, Secretary of State to Mary, Queen of Scots). Indeed, other poems in the Maitland Quarto are dedicated to, or written in tribute to, Marie and concentrate on her virtue, modesty, virginity and chastity, all the usual patriarchal qualities associated with a 'good' early modern women.
The fact that at least one poem is written via a female voice to another woman is certainly fascinating in and of itself and scholarly attention elsewhere has legitimately been paid to it; but the overclaiming here and creation of a mythical affair for which we have no evidence is exaggerated in this book. Marie might well have had a sexual affair with a woman, for all we know, but it seems extremely unlikely that if she had, she would reveal it in a family manuscript, a parallel to family bibles that were held within the family and passed through generations. It's also the case that women did have passionate romantic friendships at the time, as did men, and the language of sixteenth century friendship frequently sounds sexual and passionate to our ears: Montaigne, for example, describes how his eyes first met those of his best male friend across a crowded marketplace, and this is completely platonic. That's not to say that Marie definitively didn't fall in love with a woman and write about it, simply that we can't necessarily draw that conclusion from this poem: the text itself compares a female/female relationship to classical examples of male friendship (Achilles and Patroclus who are never described as lovers in Homer), heterosexual marriage (Odysseus and Penelope), and female devotion (the biblical Ruth and Naomi, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law). It's also the case that Sappho was known for her male lovers in the sixteenth century from Ovid's Heroides 15, Sappho to Phaon, so the repeated claiming of Marie's 'sapphic' position is ahistorical as is the category of 'lesbian' when understandings of gender and sexuality in the sixteenth century just didn't map onto our own classifications.
On top of misgivings about the lack of literary contextualisation and knowledge of poetic manuscript culture and analysis, this book retells lots of well-known history based around Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth etc., which is frustrating to have to wade through to get to Marie Maitland herself - conventional histories focus on her father and brother so it's useful to learn more about Marie herself which I appreciated.
Overall, then, there are some interesting poems in this manuscript that could be female authored, even by Marie Maitland, though there isn't a secure attribution. Transcribing your name on a manuscript cover just wasn't a claim to authorship in the period and, indeed, the majority of poems in the Maitland Quarto were written by various men from both within the family and by recognised Scottish and English poets. The overclaiming and probable fictionalisation of a story of a lesbian love affair for which there is no evidence does a disservice to the legitimate literary interest, and ends up being unconvincing in the extreme.
Which is a shame as it would be wonderful to find an authentic lesbian love affair hidden in an early modern manuscript... poetry can, of course, be interpreted in personal ways in individual readings so if some readers want to take that celebratory approach then great - but the historical, cultural and scholarly literary evidence that this theory requires simply isn't there.
Many thanks to Headline for an ARC via NetGalley
August 7, 2026
Marie Maitland is an over looked figure in Scottish history. Sister to William and John Maitland, influence figures in the dramatic live of Mary, Queen of Scots, this book looks to balance the scales a little.
The book covers what little we know of Marie's life, while also exploring the lives of her family and the wider implications of Scottish history at this time. It is also a loving examination of her poetry and brings it to life with updated versions, using modern language to bring Old Scot to our ears.
This is also a book about the male slant of history. Not only how history has focused on her father or her brothers, but the way in which her achievements were ignored in favour of others. She literally signed her name twice and male historians through the ages looked at the document and went 'nah, someone else (male) wrote this.' Just as they looked at her poetry and thought 'what good friends she was with another woman.' Its Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum all over again, its every historical example of same sex lovers brushed aside as just really good friends.
It's a measure of how connected I felt to Marie, how invested in her, that her eventual fate hit me like a sledgehammer. it is tragic and isn't fair, but this isn't fiction, this is the harsh reality of what life in Scotland in that time really was like. At least some small measure of Marie is preserved, remembered. We might not know the name of the woman she loved, but thanks to this book, we know she loved. She lived, she loved, and for a while, she was happy.
We should all be so lucky.
~Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review~
The book covers what little we know of Marie's life, while also exploring the lives of her family and the wider implications of Scottish history at this time. It is also a loving examination of her poetry and brings it to life with updated versions, using modern language to bring Old Scot to our ears.
This is also a book about the male slant of history. Not only how history has focused on her father or her brothers, but the way in which her achievements were ignored in favour of others. She literally signed her name twice and male historians through the ages looked at the document and went 'nah, someone else (male) wrote this.' Just as they looked at her poetry and thought 'what good friends she was with another woman.' Its Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum all over again, its every historical example of same sex lovers brushed aside as just really good friends.
It's a measure of how connected I felt to Marie, how invested in her, that her eventual fate hit me like a sledgehammer. it is tragic and isn't fair, but this isn't fiction, this is the harsh reality of what life in Scotland in that time really was like. At least some small measure of Marie is preserved, remembered. We might not know the name of the woman she loved, but thanks to this book, we know she loved. She lived, she loved, and for a while, she was happy.
We should all be so lucky.
~Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review~
August 29, 2026
This is a lively view of the life of Marie Maitland, using documents and poems to flesh out an otherwise sparsely documented life. The account is animated by lived experience and a reflection in changes in social and cultural attitudes. The documentary history is interesting, particularly the light the documents are used to throw on Marie’s relationship with her father (but not her mother, who seems to be absent from documentary record). The literary readings are less contextualised either by contemporary Scottish lyric (although we understand the General misogyny) or by women’s writing in English (the most obvious and easiest comparison) or in Latin (there isn’t detailed discussion of what Marie might have derived from Olympia Morata) or other European vernaculars. It would also have been valuable to see the title page with the anagram, to get a sense of the manuscript. However it is always good to see engagement with Scottish writing pre-Burns, and this account will surely provoke more work.
September 12, 2026
Overall a good read based on an incredibly cool discovery, but what bothered me about the book was the author's extended speculation and at times projection on how Marie might have been feeling at certain points in her life (e.g., "if Marie attended John's funeral...it was surely only out of a sense of propriety, as opposed to affection" - do we really "surely" know that?). Ultimately, I think that for a non-fiction book, the author's own thoughts and feelings about the people in Marie Maitland's life (good and bad) are projected a bit too much into the analyses of both the poems and the imagined circumstances of Marie's life based on legal and financial documents.
It was still really interesting to learn about Scottish history beyond King James/Mary of Scots and to learn of names that a lot of local streets and locations are named after now though!
It was still really interesting to learn about Scottish history beyond King James/Mary of Scots and to learn of names that a lot of local streets and locations are named after now though!
August 23, 2026
Fascinating.
This is the untold - now told - story of Marie, a Scottish woman who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century, wrote poems, and loved women.
I travelled back in time, and while I was learning about the highs and lows of Marie's life and about the historical context, including the condition of women, I felt saddened by her story but, at the same time, thrilled that we are now able to know of her existence.
I also enjoyed being directly exposed to historical Scots language, as it made my journey back in time feel even more real.
And the acknowledgements pages are the most passionate I’ve ever read. The author’s enthusiasm is contagious.
Mission accomplished - Marie, we won’t forget you!
This is the untold - now told - story of Marie, a Scottish woman who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century, wrote poems, and loved women.
I travelled back in time, and while I was learning about the highs and lows of Marie's life and about the historical context, including the condition of women, I felt saddened by her story but, at the same time, thrilled that we are now able to know of her existence.
I also enjoyed being directly exposed to historical Scots language, as it made my journey back in time feel even more real.
And the acknowledgements pages are the most passionate I’ve ever read. The author’s enthusiasm is contagious.
Mission accomplished - Marie, we won’t forget you!
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August 30, 2026Marie was a badass woman. I would love to read more about her in her own words. ❤️
September 11, 2026
I don’t like factual history books - so when this was offered by our book club I thought twice about reading it. I am soooo glad I did. But why did I love this one? It’s written by an academic historian so I expected it to be dry and a tough read. I was wrong.
This is book tells the story of a strong, intelligent, lesbian woman who writes. And. Having listened to the her speak at the book club event, I could say the same about the author. Whilst it is clearly based around the research the history is written in a way that engages the reader - she’s weaves the story of Marie Maitland and her poetry so beautifully.
I put off starting this one but when I did I couldn’t put it down. An important book with clear value in terms of historic importance that is accessible to all. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
This is book tells the story of a strong, intelligent, lesbian woman who writes. And. Having listened to the her speak at the book club event, I could say the same about the author. Whilst it is clearly based around the research the history is written in a way that engages the reader - she’s weaves the story of Marie Maitland and her poetry so beautifully.
I put off starting this one but when I did I couldn’t put it down. An important book with clear value in terms of historic importance that is accessible to all. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews