Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

Queen, and poet, Mary Stuart, also Mary Stewart, Marie Stuart, queen of Scots (1542–1587) wrote a significant body of poetry and prose in French, Italian, and Latin, including memorial inscriptions added to Books of Hours owned by her maternal French aunts and cousins, an elegy written on the occasion of her first husband, François II’s, untimely death, sonnets sent to Elizabeth I expressing first a desire to meet, and later requests for support, plus a host of sonnets and quatrains reflecting on her enforced abdication and imprisonment, many in the prayerbooks kept with her. Set against what Mary wrote of herself are the infamous Casket sonnets and letters which were so carefully ascribed to Mary and designed to prove her adultery and complicity in her second husband’s murder.