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.
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...
Literary responses
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Though the first review to appear, in the Monthly Repository, expressed admiration (and some anti-war feeling),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
476
other responses were disapproving, even vitriolic. Many cited the allegedly unpatriotic tendency of the poem in terms...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
draws on Hannah More
, her niece Lucy Aikin
, and (anonymously) Joanna Baillie
. She is even-handed in that she includes six excerpts from James Fordyce
's Sermons to Young Women, a...
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.
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...
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...
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...