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
Literary responses Margaret Holford
Baillie praised the language of Holford's hymns as beautiful if perhaps a little too oriental,and the thoughts just & elevated & appropriate to the awful situation for which they are intended.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
2: 601
Her...
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.
qtd. in
Somerville, Mary. Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville. Editor Somerville, Martha, 1815 - 1879, Roberts Brothers, 1874.
204
After reading the preliminary dissertation,...
Literary responses Anna Brownell Jameson
Reviewers noted the fact that it was a woman who had set out on this bold journey. Christian Isobel Johnstone 's review in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine was fairly typical in suggesting that that Winter Studies...
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.
Grey, Barbarina Charlotte, Lady. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray, 1908.
30-1, 39
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
The play's debut was disappointing. It closed after a single night, though it was remounted with greater success in Edinburgh the following April with Harriet Siddons in a major role (having been recruited at Joanna Baillie
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.
qtd. in
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1931.
252
Of much comment after their publication, Lady Charlotte Bury
Literary responses Mary Russell Mitford
MRM 's plays were admired by Maria Edgeworth , Joanna Baillie , and Felicia Hemans , though John Genest (in Some Account of the English Stage, from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, 1832), judged them dull.
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
Joanna Baillie found some exquisite things in this volume, written with FH 's own peculiar strain of melancholy tenderness. . . . Aye, woman becomes a most-noble & generous being, painted by her hand!
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
2: 709
Literary responses Catherine Fanshawe
CF 's immediately posthumous reputation rested, like her writings themselves, on oral tradition. She had the admiration of William Cowper and Walter Scott , as well as Joanna Baillie , Anne Grant , and Mary Berry
Literary responses Dorothea Primrose Campbell
Joanna Baillie assured DPC that she and her sister had been sufficiently impressed to go back and re-read several parts of the novel.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
2: 1159
Literary responses Anna Mary Howitt
The earlier set of illustrations was warmly praised by Joanna Baillie .
Literary responses Mary Berry
The sculptor Richard Westmacott wrote to MB expressing regret at the lack of attention paid her historical work, and contrasting it with the fashion for female gothic by, for instance, Charlotte Dacre (Rosa Matilda...
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.
Grey, Barbarina Charlotte, Lady. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray, 1908.
39
Literary responses Isabel Hill
A notice in The London Magazine favourably compared The Poet's Child to Joanna Baillie 's writing, and described its use of language as simple, in exceedingly pure taste, and at times eminently beautiful.
Hill, Benson Earle. “Memoir of the Late Isabel Hill”. The Monthly Magazine, Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Feb. 1842.
182
Literary responses Susan Ferrier
Again SF met with success on balance. The Athenæum, however, naming Miss Ferriar as author, stated that the success of Marriage, backed by the good-natured commendation of Sir Walter Scott , induced the...

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