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 Helen Maria Williams
That year HMW was introduced by Dr John Moore to Burns , with whom she then corresponded. She met Samuel Rogers (in November 1787), Hester Lynch Piozzi , and Sir Joshua Reynolds . The year...
Publishing Helen Maria Williams
The Poems were in two volumes, with HMW 's name in full, published by Rivington and Marshall , with an engraved frontispiece drawn by Maria Cosway . Subscribers included the Prince of Wales (whose name...
Publishing Helena Wells
She published this with Longman , signing her preface Helena Wells Whitford, though the title-page says only by the Author of the Step-Mother. Subscribers included Joanna Baillie and Anne Hunter . The title-page...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
The book is prefaced by a glossary which informs the reader that Edinburgh is nicknamed Auld Reekie, that to gowl is to weep noisily, to rug and rive is to carry off by violence...
Literary responses Mary Tighe
As soon as it was brought to public attention (as the work of a woman who had died tragically young), Psyche attracted a rush of attention. The Quarterly Review accorded Tighe high praise as being...
Friends, Associates Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS was introduced as a young woman into the Bluestocking circle. Her friendship with the younger Louisa Clinton produced some attractive letters and that with Frances, Lady Douglas , produced a remarkable memoir. Lady Douglas's...
Friends, Associates Mary Somerville
The Somervilles' circle was not purely a scientific one, and MS became a friend of the actress Lady Becher and with the Baillie family. She accompanied Joanna Baillie to the opening of the latter's play...
Literary responses Mary Somerville
The text was praised by Maria Edgeworth for hav[ing] enlarged my conception of the sublimity of the universe, beyond any ideas I had ever before been enable to form.
Somerville, Mary. Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville. Editor Somerville, Martha, Roberts Brothers.
204
After reading the preliminary dissertation,...
Literary responses Anna Seward
Scott confided to Joanna Baillie after AS 's death that he had developed a most unsentimental horror for her sentimental letters while he was receiving them.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
252
Of much comment after their publication, Lady Charlotte Bury
Publishing Caroline Scott
Another edition of A Marriage in High Life appeared in 1836, besides a Philadelphia edition of 1833, and German and French translations (of which the latter was misascribed to Joanna Baillie ).
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Textual Production A. Mary F. Robinson
In the same year, 1894, AMFR contributed critical introductions to selections by Felicia Hemans and Joanna Baillie in The English Poets, edited by Humphry Ward (husband of the well-known novelist ).
Robinson, A. Mary F. et al. “Critical Introductions”. The English Poets, edited by Thomas Humphry Ward, New Edition, Macmillian, pp. 4: 221 -34.
4: ix-x
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Robinson
MR 's daughter grew up to be a writer, and to publish two books under her own name as well as revising and editing work by MR . Hers are the gothic, epistolary Minerva novel...
Health Ann Radcliffe
Rictor Norton believes that AR may have suffered a nervous breakdown in 1803, after finishing Gaston de Blondeville, and another in late 1812, after the publishing of Anna Seward 's letters alleging that she...
Textual Production Ann Radcliffe
AR was much upset when on the first, anonymous appearance of Joanna Baillie 's Plays on the Passions she was suspected of being the author: especially when she later learned that Anna Seward , for...
Anthologization Anna Maria Porter
Her Hymn on the Seasons was included by Joanna Baillie in her Collection of Poems, published in early 1823.

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.