Joanna Baillie

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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.

Milestones

11 September 1762

JB was born at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the youngest of three surviving children.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
3

By September 1798

JB published, anonymously, the first instalment in her planned dramatic sequence, A Series of Plays on the Passions.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
24 (1798): 13

30 April 1800

The authorship of JB 's first volume of Plays on the Passions was finally revealed.
Dowd, Maureen A. “’By the Delicate Hand of a Female’: Melodramatic Mania and Joanna Baillie’s Spectacular Tragedies”. European Romantic Review, Vol.
9
, No. 4, pp. 469-00.
488n17

1802

JB published, with her name, a second instalment of her Plays on the Passions.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
18, 207

By 16 December 1811

JB published a third instalment of her Plays on the Passions, with 1812 on its title-page.
Carhart gives the date of July 1812.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
207
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 118

1821

JB reprinted together the three successive volumes of her Series of Plays on the Passions.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1849

JB published her last known separate work, Ahalya Baee . A Poem, about a historical female ruler in India.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
208
The actual Ahalya Bai was a benevolent ruler who held power from 1765 to 1795.
Thompson, Edward John, and Geoffrey Theodore Garratt. Rise and Fulfillment of British Rule in India. Macmillan.
180

23 February 1851

JB died at Bolton House, Windmill Hill in Hampstead.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
68

Biography

Birth and Family

11 September 1762

JB was born at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the youngest of three surviving children.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
3

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