With My Own Hand : Ashley Douglas on Scotland’s sixteenth-century Sappho

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.

About the author:

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.

About the chair:

Indigo (she/her) is a researcher and writer based in Edinburgh, focusing on queer storytelling through museum and gallery collections. From castles to convict barracks, she has worked in the heritage sector for over ten years across Australia and Scotland.

She specialises in research and public programmes that make space for marginalised stories in traditional places. Indigo has delivered conference papers and workshops about how to uncover queer links in historic houses and appeared on the podcast Bad Gays. She is currently the co-chair of the National Trust for Scotland’s LGBTQ network and supports organisations in queering heritage spaces.