Joanna Baillie (11 September 1762 – 23 February 1851) was a Scottish poet and dramatist, known for such works as Plays on the Passions (three volumes, 1798–1812) and Fugitive Verses (1840).

[1] She was critically acclaimed in her lifetime, and while living in Hampstead, associated with contemporary writers such as Anna Barbauld, Lucy Aikin, and Walter Scott.

Baillie did not learn to read until the age of ten, when she attended Miss McDonald's Glasgow boarding school, ostensibly known for "transforming healthy little hoydens into perfect little ladies" (Carswell 266).

They returned in 1784,[2] as her uncle Dr William Hunter had died the year before and her brother had been left a London house and his collection, which is now the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

She studied Corneille, Racine, Molière, Voltaire and Shakespeare, and wrote plays and poetry while running their brother's household until he married in 1791.

[2][7] Her aunt Anne Home Hunter introduced her to London literary society, after in 1800, a re- print of her work revealed her identity.

[2] When she reached her seventies, Baillie experienced a year of ill health, but recovered and returned to writing and correspondence, and included Scottish folk songs in her Fugitive Verses written in her eighties (in 1840).

[3] "[Joanna Baillie] was anxious that all her works with the exception of her theological pamphlet (see Religious writing) be collected in a single volume, and had the satisfaction of seeing this 'great monster book' as she called it, which appeared in 1851, shortly before she died.

"[2] In a long introductory discourse, the author defended and explained her ambitious design to illustrate each of the deepest and strongest passions of the human mind.

The plays, the author explained, were part of a still larger design and completely original concept, arising from a particular view of human nature, in which sympathetic curiosity and observation of the movement of feeling in others were paramount.

[8] This unusually analytical and arguably artificial approach generated much discussion and controversy, and in "a week or two Plays on the Passions was a main topic... in the best literary circles" (Carswell 273).

In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, she wrote, "Were it not that my Brother has expressed a strong wish that I should publish a small vol: of poetry, I should have very little pleasure in the thought.

The criticism that she had no understanding of practical stagecraft and that her plays were torpid and dull in performance rankled throughout her life, and she was always delighted to hear of a production being mounted, no matter how humble it might be.

In 1831 she entered into public theological debate with a pamphlet, A view of the general tenour of the New Testament regarding the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ, where she analysed the doctrines of order in the Trinity, Arianism, and Socinianism.

[11] Believing that "no Christian — no Protestant Christian, regulates, or at least ought to regulate, his faith by any thing but what appears to him to be really taught in Scripture,” she devoted most of A view of the general tenour of the New Testament regarding the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ to presenting relevant passages in the New Testament so that those with "[g]ood intentions [and] a clear common understanding" could make their own decisions regarding the question of Christ's divinity.

[12] The Unitarian minister Thomas Sadler, who preached her funeral sermon, appreciated not only "her own free and diligent search after revealed truth" but also the way that she "respected the faithful convictions of others in proportion as she valued her own.

"[13] Financially secure herself, Joanna Baillie customarily gave half her earnings from writing to charity, and engaged in many philanthropic activities.

She declined to send a poem, fearing that was "just the very way to have the whole matter considered by the sober pot-boilers over the whole kingdom as a fanciful and visionary thing," whereas "a plain statement of their miserable lot in prose, accompanied with a simple, reasonable plan for sweeping chimneys without them" was far better strategically (letter, 5 Feb 1824).

[15] Baillie befriended the eccentric American writer, critic and activist John Neal, after reading his article "Men and Women" in Blackwood's Magazine in October 1824.

[citation needed] American critic and writer John Neal referred to Baillie in an 1866 Atlantic Monthly article as the "female Shakespeare of a later age".

[17] John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, recalled that in childhood, Baillie's Constantine Paleologus seemed to him "one of the most glorious of human compositions" He continued to see it "one of the best dramas of the last two centuries".

Scholars now recognize her importance as a stage innovator and dramatic theorist, and critics and literary historians of the Romantic period concerned with reassessing the place of women writers acknowledge her significance.

After this, she was more critical of Lord Byron and his work, calling his characters "untrue to nature and morally bankrupt"[22] While they were still polite to each other as literary contemporaries, their friendship did not return.