Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Joanna Baillie
-
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.
Her friends at this period of her life included the diarist and letter-writer Caroline Fox
(with whom her relationship was very close),
This is the Hon. Caroline Fox (1767-1845), not to be confused with the...
Travel
Augusta Ada Byron
Ada visited, among other places, Genoa, Turin, Lake Geneva, Mont Blanc, and Stuttgart. She wrote letters describing the Alps to her mother's close friend the writer Joanna Baillie
.
Byron, Augusta Ada. Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers. Editor Toole, Betty A., Strawberry Press.
28
Woolley, Benjamin. The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter. Macmillan.
110-11
Literary responses
Frances Burney
The Memoirsdid not win critical acclaim,
Doody, Margaret Anne. Frances Burney: The Life in the Works. Cambridge University Press.
378
though Joanna Baillie
and her sister, who had known many of the people depicted in the memoirs, enjoyed them immensely, especially FB
's juvenile letters. Baillie, who...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Harriet Burney
SHB
's friendships were complicated by her prickliness about her lack of means and status, and her talent for satire. In general she preferred the company of men to women, since she was often thrown...
Friends, Associates
Mary Bryan
MB
approached Sir Walter Scott
on 10 June 1818, seeking the furtherance of her literary career. The extant correspondence spans nine years. His side does not survive, and there is no evidence that they ever...
Dedications
Mary Brunton
MB
published at Edinburgh and London her first, anonymous novel, Self-Control; she dated her dedication of it to Joanna Baillie
this month.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 341
Friends, Associates
Mary Brunton
MB
's earliest close friend in Edinburgh was a Mrs Izett. When she dedicated her first book to Joanna Baillie
, this began a friendship between them. She was friendly with Anne Grant
(who was...
Literary responses
Mary Brunton
This novel was reviewed at the beginning of the next year.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
5th ser. 1 (1815): 84
When the Baillie sisters re-read it aloud in 1840, Joanna
found the story well imagined and the copious authorial...
death
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Joanna Baillie
told Margaret Hodson (formerly Holford)
that HMB
, who was devotedly nursed by a friend, was kept ignorant by her doctors of what disease she had (oddly, since she knew she had not...
Textual Production
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
This too was written long before publication: in 1801, HMB
said in a preface dated 1819, with the aim of combating the ideas of Godwin
and other Jacobins, and the horrors of the French Revolution...
Literary responses
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Joanna Baillie
called this novel in parts an interesting story very well told, but found fault with the moral of the lesson,
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 471
which, she observed, did less for the cause of single women...
Anthologization
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Joanna Baillie
chose two of EOB
's poems for inclusion in her Collection of Poems, published in early 1823.
Baillie, Joanna, editor. A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, and from Living Authors. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
Lucy Aikin
's memoir of Benger (as published in one of its subject's works after...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Having already praised many contemporary women writers in print, EOB
was now able to meet them. The move to London was accomplished principally through the zealous friendship of Miss Sarah Wesley
, who had already...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
The guests included Joanna Baillie
, Jane Porter
(both mentioned as celebrities) and Eliza Fenwick
.
Robinson, Henry Crabb. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. Editor Sadler, Thomas, Macmillan.
199-200
Robinson, Henry Crabb. Diary.
Friends, Associates
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Joanna Baillie
, who lived near the Barbaulds in Hampstead, was one of ALB
's greatest friends. In Barbauld's later years her friends included Samuel Rogers
, Madame D'Arblay
, Eliza Fletcher
(who first visited...
