Esther Copley (born Esther Deuzeville on 10 May 1786 in London, died on 17 July 1851 in Eythorne, Kent) was an English religious tractarian and children's writer.
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She was the youngest daughter of a silk manufacturer, Peter Beuzeville (1741-1812), and his wife, Mary Griffith Meredith (1744-1811), who were of Huguenot origin. She married in 1809 the Oxford cleric James Philip Hewlett (1779/80-1820), who was curate of St. Aldate's and chaplain of the Oxford University colleges of Magdalen and New College. They had two sons, who also become Anglican clerics, and a daughter. In 1827 she married William Copley (1796-1857), a Baptist minister in Oxford, whose chapel she had joined. They moved later to St. Helier, Jersey, then Eythorne, Kent, but they separated in 1843, perhaps due to Copley's alcoholism, which had already involved her in writing his sermons for him.
Esther was a prolific author of children's books, tracts, and books on domestic economy. Cottage Comforts (1825), addressed to the working people, went into scores of editions, for example. Among several other works on domestic matters was the pamphlet Hints on the Cholera morbus (1832), on how to prevent and treat the disease. Her stories for children were mainly didactic, designed to make them thrifty and good by providing examples of moral behavior. She also wrote longer, non-fiction works for children, including Scripture Natural History for Youth (1828) and a 500-page History of Slavery and its Abolition (1836).
Esther Copley was buried in Eythorne, but in 1996, a plaque to her and her extended family was erected in the United Reformed church, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where she and her parents had moved in the early years of the 19th century.