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Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis

A special exhibition at the Folger

Booking and details

Plan your visit

Dates Fri, Oct 25, 2024 – Sun, Jan 19, 2025

Venue Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall

Tickets Free; timed-entry pass recommended

Esther Inglis (1570?—1624) was a professional-class Franco-Scottish refugee, a working mother of eight, and a contemporary of Shakespeare. Earning her living by her pen, she combined her artistic skills and her religious beliefs to create over 60 miniature handwritten and hand-illustrated books. She strategically gifted these books to dozens of prominent European Protestants during a period of religious turmoil. Four hundred years after her death, this exhibition explores Esther’s life and work as an early modern influencer and as the first woman in Britain to preface her works with selfies.

Little Books, Big Gifts showcases 12 examples of Inglis’ work, from both the Folger’s own collection and select items from the Houghton Library at Harvard University, illustrating the breadth of Inglis’ artistic, literary, and social networking achievements. Together, the two libraries hold the largest selection of Inglis’ surviving works in the United States.

Esther’s Evolving Self-Portraits

Self-portraits are all about branding, but they must also keep up with changing fads. Esther’s self-portraits followed trends in portraiture and evolved with her career. As she established herself as an artist, she ditched the acceptable signs of female conformity and represented herself solely as a book artist and calligrapher. Eventually, even the desk and writing tools disappear, and it is just Esther.

Meet the curators

Ashley Buchanan

Photo of Ashley Buchanan

Ashley Buchanan is the Associate Director of Fellowships for the Folger Institute and a historian of the early modern world, with a particular interest in plants, recipes, and medicinal cultures in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Her research spans many topics which includes the history of science and medicine, women, and politics as well as the dynamics of gender and authority. Her current book project investigates the social, cultural, and political significance of pharmaceutical experimentation as well as the medicinal and botanical patronage at the court of the last Medici Princess, Anna Maria Luisa de Medici (1667–1743).

Heather Wolfe

Heather Wolfe is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger. She is currently writing a book on early modern stationery in England. She has published widely on topics such as early modern women’s manuscripts, writing tables, filing holes, letterwriting practices, Shakespeare’s coat of arms, rag collectors, and hybrid books. She teaches paleography (how to read old handwriting) for the Folger Institute and is leading an ongoing project to transcribe all of the Folger’s manuscripts. She curated the online resources Shakespeare Documented and Early Modern Manuscripts Online and was co-director of the Mellon-funded project Before Farm to Table. With Julie Fisher and Sara Powell, she created the virtual paleographical escape room, The Ghost of Blithfield Hall, which has been played by hundreds of budding paleographers.

Georgianna Ziegler

Georgianna Ziegler is the Louis B. Thalheimer Assoc. Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She has published widely on early modern women in literature and art, and curated major exhibitions at the Folger, including Elizabeth I: Then and Now and Shakespeare’s Sisters. Her article on Inglis’s self-portraits appeared recently in Renaissance Quarterly, and she also wrote the entries on Esther Inglis for The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women and the History of the Book in Scotland volume 1. She maintains a major website on Esther Inglis and is currently finishing the first book-length biography of her for Edinburgh University Press.

Related programs

Gallery Talk: How to Curate an Exhibition: Little Books, Big Gifts

Gallery Talk: Little Books, Big Gifts

How do you curate an exhibition? Join co-curator Georgianna Ziegle as she chats about decisions made and the objects displayed in the Folger's temporary exhibition, "Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis."
Thu, Nov 14, 2024, 6:30pm
Rose Exhibition Hall
Coded Threads: Translating Shakespeare Through Art

Coded Threads: Translating Shakespeare Through Art

Leading Maryland fiber artists, including Folger Institute Artist Fellow Suzanne Coley, will present modern needlework designs inspired by Shakespeare.
Sat, Nov 16 at 11:30am ET
Folger Library

More about Esther Inglis

Watch | A look at early modern "selfies" by calligrapher, artist, and writer Esther Inglis
Shakespeare and Beyond

Watch | A look at early modern "selfies" by calligrapher, artist, and writer Esther Inglis

Posted

Enjoy a video from the Esther Inglis special exhibition, showing how early modrern calligrapher, artist, and writer Inglis’s self-portraits helped tell her story.

Princely New Year's Gift? A Newly-Discovered Manuscript
Collation

Princely New Year's Gift? A Newly-Discovered Manuscript

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Author
Georgianna Ziegler

What better way to greet the New Year than with a ceremony of gift giving among friends and acquaintances? It was certainly a popular way to celebrate at the courts of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I.

Spotlight on a calligrapher
Collation

Spotlight on a calligrapher

Posted
Author
Georgianna Ziegler

In an era when many schools don’t even teach cursive handwriting anymore because everyone taps out their messages on screens, it may seem quaint to focus on a woman known for her handwriting. But that’s exactly why we’re attracted to Esther Inglis.