Joanna Baillie

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Standard Name: Baillie, Joanna
Birth Name: Joanna Baillie
Nickname: Jack
Self-constructed Name: Mrs Joanna Baillie
JB is best known for her stylistically and thematically innovative drama, published from 1798 and through the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Her poetry is now also beginning to be appreciated and a scholarly edition of her letters is available in print and on line. She also published a poetry anthology. Whether regarded from the viewpoint of Scotland or that of London, she is one of the important writers of her generation.
Engraving of Joanna Baillie, circa 1800, seated against a draped background. Her white headscarf contrasts with the dark background.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Lucy Aikin
In her memoirs LA claims to have been acquainted with all the notable literary women of her time. She was a close friend of Joanna Baillie and Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger . Another important friend and...
death Lucy Aikin
Her grave is next to that of her friend Joanna Baillie .
Le Breton, Philip Hemery, and Lucy Aikin. “Memoir”. Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
xxvii-xxviii
Reception Lucy Aikin
On this date Joanna Baillie reported that she and her sister were deeply engaged
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 174
in this work, and finding themselves fascinated.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 174
Textual Production Lucy Aikin
LA memoir of Anna Letitia Barbauld , in her edition of Barbauld's Works, June 1825, represents a well-planned if largely unsuccessful attempt to establish and preserve Barbauld's reputation after systemic attack by political conservatives...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
In her general overview of the history of English literature during these centuries, she focuses especially on English poets because as she says, great poets not only give form, power and beauty to a nation's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Bannerman
The contents included odes, sonnets (including one sequence from Petrarch and another based on Goethe 's Werther, in which she speaks as the male lover of a woman, with notes relating her poems to...
Literary responses Anne Bannerman
After her death AB was quickly forgotten. Yet literary historian Stuart Curran has recently noted the influence of her poetry on Dorothea Primrose Campbell . Critic Adriana Craciun , writing for the website Scottish Women...
Literary responses Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Joanna Baillie thought this the most stage-worthy of her friend's plays, if not the best in other respects.
Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray.
30-1, 39
Reception Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Joanna Baillie took pains to secure a box for the first night, which turned out to be the only one.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 166
Textual Production Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Dacre wrote the epilogue too, which was delivered by her daughter in character as the heroine.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
N13508 (6 February 1828): 3
She had invited Joanna Baillie and her sister to attend, though the latter was...
Textual Production Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
In March 1819 Joanna Baillie had described her as Still hankering after the Drama, but fearful & diffident of herself.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
2: 1191
Dacre's prefatory comments play down her ambition and even her skill, but she...
Literary responses Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Joanna Baillie , while she liked the Burns imitations as poetry, observed that the Scots idiom was not quite right.
Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray.
39
Literary responses Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Joanna Baillie thought the dialogue here very clever and natural.
Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray.
152
Textual Production Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
BBBD was a conscientious and entertaining letter-writer with a large circle of correspondents. The Plymouth and West Devon Record Office holds a collection of her correspondence from the 1840s with Frances Parker, Countess of Morley
Friends, Associates Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Her many literary friendships, maintained in part by correspondence, included those with Joanna Baillie and Mary Russell Mitford (who first met each other in her drawing-room), Catherine Fanshawe , and Mary Tighe (with whom she...

Timeline

1749: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock published Der...

Writing climate item

1749

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock published Der Messias, a religiouspoem in three cantos.

9 September 1803: The first number appeared of the Annual Review,...

Writing climate item

9 September 1803

The first number appeared of the Annual Review, a Dissenting periodical run by Lucy Aikin 's brother Arthur Aikin , which had been planned in 1802.

Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...

Writing climate item

Early 1818

William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.

By 19 December 1831: Cholera was sufficiently widespread in London...

Building item

By 19 December 1831

Cholera was sufficiently widespread in London for Joanna Baillie to comment on the general panic and uneasiness.

13 February 1832: Cholera was registered as epidemic in London...

Building item

13 February 1832

Cholera was registered as epidemic in London (a couple of months after Joanna Baillie recorded anxiety about it). This was the first of four major outbreaks in nineteenth-century Britain.

1835: Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were...

National or international item

1835

Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were awarded honorary memberships by the Royal Astronomical Society .

20 November 1837: Joanna Baillie wrote a heartfelt complaint...

Writing climate item

20 November 1837

Joanna Baillie wrote a heartfelt complaint (which she feared might sound envious & spiteful) about the effects of the recent fashion for expensive albums, or annuals or gift books.

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

1868: Emily Taylor (1795-18), who is remembered...

Writing climate item

1868

Emily Taylor (1795-18), who is remembered for books connected with her school-teaching career, published Memories of some Contemporary Poets, with Selections from their Writings, with a good representation of women among her subjects (from...

April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...

Writing climate item

April 1879

James Murray —editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.

1994: Juggernaut was set up as a small New York...

Women writers item

1994

Juggernaut was set up as a small New York theatre company; in 2001 it decided to publicise the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women playwrights.

Texts

Baillie, Joanna, editor. A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, and from Living Authors. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823.
Baillie, Joanna. Ahalya Baee. Printed for private circulation, Spottiswoode and Shaw, 1849.
Baillie, Joanna. Constantine Paleologus. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805.
Baillie, Joanna. De Monfort. T. Caddell and W. Davies, 1798.
Baillie, Joanna. Dramas. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836.
Baillie, Joanna. “Editorial Materials”. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, edited by Judith Bailey Slagle, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, pp. ix - xiv, 1.
Baillie, Joanna. Epilogue to the Theatrical Representation at Strawberry-Hill. 1800.
Baillie, Joanna. Fugitive Verses. E. Moxon, 1840.
Baillie, Joanna. Further Letters. Editor McLean, Thomas, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010.
Baillie, Joanna. Henriquez. M. Carey, 1836.
Baillie, Joanna. “Introduction”. Poems, 1790, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, Woodstock, 1994.
Baillie, Joanna. “Introduction”. The Selected Poems of Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851, edited by Jennifer Breen, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 1-25.
Baillie, Joanna. Lines on the Death of Sir Walter Scott. 1832.
Baillie, Joanna. Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821.
Baillie, Joanna. Miscellaneous Plays. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; A. Constable, 1804.
Baillie, Joanna. Plays on the Passions. T. Caddell and W. Davies, 1812.
Baillie, Joanna. Plays on the Passions. Editor Duthie, Peter, Broadview, 2001.
Baillie, Joanna. Poems, 1790. J. Johnson, 1790.
Baillie, Joanna, and George Thomson. “Songs”. Thomson’s Collection of the Songs of Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Bart. and other Eminent Lyric Poets, Preston, 1824, p. various pages.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
Baillie, Joanna. The Complete Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie. Carey and Lea, 1832.
Baillie, Joanna. The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851.
Baillie, Joanna. The Election. M. Carey, 1811.
Baillie, Joanna. The Family Legend. John Ballantyne; Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810.
Baillie, Joanna. The Selected Poems of Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851. Editor Breen, Jennifer, Manchester University Press, 1999.