Joanna Baillie

Joanna Baillie. Engraving by H. Robinson. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Joanna Baillie
Born	September 11 1762(1762-Template:MONTHNUMBER-11) Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died	February 23 1851(1851-Template:MONTHNUMBER-23) (aged 88) Hampstead, England
Occupation	Playwright, Poet
Nationality	Scottish
Period	1790-1849
Notable work(s)	Plays on the Passions

Joanna Baillie (11 September 1762 - 23 February 1851) was a Scottish poet and dramatist. Admired both for her literary powers and for her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a brilliant literary society in her cottage at Hampstead. Baillie died at the age of 88, her faculties remaining unimpaired to the last.

Life

Overview

Bailey was the daughter of the minister of Bothwell, afterwards Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. Her mother was a sister of anatomists William and John Hunter, and her brother was celebrated physician Matthew Bailey of London. She received a thorough education at Glasgow, and at an early age went to London, where the remainder of her long, happy, and honored, though uneventful, life was passed. In 1798, when she was 36, the debut volume of her Plays on the Passions appeared, and was received with much favor; 2 other volumes followed, in 1802 and 1812. She also produced Miscellaneous Plays in 1804, and 3 volumes of Dramatic Poetry in 1836.

Youth

Baillie was descended from an ancient Scottish family. She was born at the manse of Bothwell, Lanarkshire. Although her birth was premature, and in infancy she was very delicate, she lived to the great age of 88 years. Her sister, to whom Joanna addressed a memorable birthday ode, was still more remarkable for her longevity, dying in 1861 at the age of 100 years. The Baillie family claimed amongst their progenitors on the male side the great patriot, Sir William Wallace.

Joanna's youth was spent at Bothwell amidst scenes which deeply impressed the imagination of the future dramatist. But while, as daughter of the minister of Bothwell, she had many opportunities for studying character, unfortunately, in the manse itself, `repression of all emotions seems to have been the constant lesson.' Before she was 10 years of age Baillie afforded striking proofs of courage; but she was somewhat backward in her studies, although her intellect was unusually keen.

At the age of 10 she was sent to a school in Glasgow, and here her faculties were rapidly developed. She excelled in vocal and instrumental music, and evinced a decided talent for drawing. She had also a great love for mathematics; her argumentative powers, too, were unusually strong. She was early distinguished for her skill in acting and composition, being especially facile in the improvisation of dialogue in character.

In 1776 her father was appointed professor of divinity at Glasgow University, and moved to the house provided for him at the university. But 2 years later Dr. Baillie died, and his widow and daughters retired to Long Calderwood, in Lanarkshire; Matthew Baillie, the only son, proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1783 Dr. William Hunter died in London, leaving to Matthew Baillie the use of his house and his fine museum and collections. The following year Mrs. Baillie and her daughters joined Matthew Baillie in London, remaining with him, until he married (in 1791) Miss Denman, sister of lord chief justice Denman.

Early career

In London Joanna Baillie's genius first displayed itself. She published anonymously, in 1790, a small volume of miscellaneous poems, entitled Fugitive Verses, which received considerable encouragement. But her genius had not yet discovered its true channel. "It was whilst imprisoned by the heat of a summer afternoon, and seated by her mother's side engaged in needle-work, that the thought of essaying dramatic composition burst upon her." The 1st play she composed, Arnold, does not survive.

In 1798 she issued the 1st volume of her Plays on the Passions, entitled A Series of Plays: In which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind, each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy. The volume contained Basil, a tragedy on love; the Trial, a comedy on the same subject; and De Monfort, a tragedy on hatred. The work was published anonymously, but its author was immediately sought after. Samuel Rogers reviewed it as the work of a man, and Sir Walter Scott was at first suspected of being the author. By few critics the volume was severely attacked; but it brought the author an acquaintance with Scott himself, which ripened into a warm friendship, lasting 'uninterruptedly for more than half a century.'

The Plays on the Passions also attracted the notice of John Kemble, who determined to produce De Monfort at Drury Lane Theatre, with himself and Mrs. Siddons in the chief characters. Every care was given to the representation of the tragedy, for which the Hon. F. North wrote a prologue, and the Duchess of Devonshire an epilogue. It was produced with much splendour in April 1800, but it failed to obtain a firm grasp upon the public. It ran, however, for 11 nights. It has been said that the passage in the play descriptive of Jane de Monfort formed the best portrait ever drawn of Mrs. Siddons herself; and "it is probable that John Kemble and his sister had been present to the mind of Joanna when she composed the tragedy of De Monfort." The opinion of Mrs. Siddons upon the play may be gathered from an expression uttered by her in conversation with the author: "Make me some more Jane de Monforts."

Undeterred by adverse criticism, Baillie in 1802 issued a 2nd volume of Plays on the Passions. It included a comedy on Hatred, a tragedy (in 2 parts) on Ambition, and a comedy on the same passion. The comedy on Hatred, with music, was produced at the English Opera House; but the tragedy on Hatred, notwithstanding its admittedly fine passages, was too unwieldy for stage production.

Shortly after the appearance of this volume Mrs. Baillie and her daughters went to live at Hampstead.

Literary success

In 1804 Joanna published a volume of Miscellaneous Plays, containing 2 tragedies, Kayner, and Constantine Paleologus. Between the 2 tragedies was placed a comedy, the Country Inn. The 2nd tragedy, Constantine Paleologus (taken from Gibbon's account of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks), was written in the hope of being produced at Drury Lane, with Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in the principal characters; but those great actors declined to produce it. The subject of Constantine Paleologus was .

But more than 5 of her plays were produced on the stage. Amongst these was Constantine Paleologus, which, while declined at Drury Lane, was produced at the Surrey Theatre as a melodrama under the title of Constantine and Valeria; Valeria being an imaginary conception, intended for Mrs. Siddons. The play was also produced at Liverpool, Dublin, and Edinburgh, in every case to large houses and with much success. Of the production in Edinburgh, in 1820, the writer herself, then on her last visit to her native land, was a gratified spectator.

In 1806 Mrs. Baillie died. The sisters then rented a new house in the neighbourhood of Hampstead heath, and this house they continued to occupy until they died.

In 1810 Baillie produced her play of the Family Legend.' It was founded upon a Highland tradition relating to the feud between the lord of Argyle and the chieftain of Maclean. The tragedy, with a prologue by Sir Walter Scott, was brought out under Scott's auspices at the Edinburgh theatre. Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, wrote an epilogue. The play had a genuine success. "You have only to imagine," wrote Scott to Miss Baillie, "all that you could wish, to give success to a play, and your conceptions will still fall short of the complete and decided triumph of the Family Legend. Everything that pretended to distinction, whether from rank or literature, was in the boxes; and in the pit such an aggregate mass of humanity as I have seldom, if ever, witnessed in the same place." The tragedy was played for 14 nights on the first representation, and it was produced on several subsequent occasions.

The success of Family Legend induced the managers of the Edinburgh theatre to revive the author's tragedy of De Monfort, and in describing the reception of this drama one who was present wrote that "the effect produced was very great; there was a burst of applause when the curtain fell, and the play was announced for repetition amid the loudest applause." In 1815 the Family Legend was produced for the benefit of Mrs. Bartley at Drury Lane Theatre, and in 1821 Kean brought forward De Monfort again on the same stage.

In 1812 appeared a 3rd series of Plays on the Passions, consisting of 2 tragedies and a comedy on the subject of Fear, and a musical drama on Hope. By the publication of this volume Miss Baillie showed that she had abandoned her old ideas. The 1st of these new plays had for its principal character a woman under the dominion of superstitious fear. In the 2nd drama the fear of death was made the actuating principle of a hero of tragedy. The hero of the 3rd play, a comedy on Fear, is represented as timid, and endeavouring to conceal his fear by a boastful affectation of gallantry.

Later life

"Joanna Baillie was under the middle size, but not diminutive, and her form was slender. Her countenance indicated high talent, worth, and decision. Her life was characterised by the purest morality." The prominent features of her character, which impressed all with whom she came in contact, were her consummate integrity, her moral courage, her freedom from affectation, and a never-failing charity in all things.

Geniality and hospitality were the characteristics of the 2 sisters during their residence at Hampstead, and even when one became an octogenarian and the other a nonagenarian they could enter keenly into the various literary and scientific controversies of the day. They were visited by many friends eminent in letters, in science, in art, and in society, and they were on very intimate terms with their neighbour, Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Scott looked forward to a visit to his friends at Hampstead as one of the greatest of his pleasures.

A deep affliction overtook the sisters Baillie in 1823 by the death of their brother, Dr. Matthew Baillie, who was tended by Joanna during his last illness with the utmost solicitude.

Joanna Baillie's drama of the Martyr was published in 1826, though it had been written some time before. The play relates to the martyrdom of Cordenius Maro, an officer of the imperial guard of Nero, who had been converted to the christian faith.

Baillie accepted the unitarian view of Christ; and in her 70th year (1832) put forward a publication on this question, entitled A View of the general Tenor of the New Testament regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ.' In this work she clearly expressed her assent to the views held by Milton and others.

In 1836 Baillie published 3 volumes of Miscellaneous Plays, which, at the time of their composition, she had intended for posthumous publication. Of the miscellaneous dramas, 2 were brought out simultaneously at Covent Garden and Drury Lane respectively; Fanny Kemble appearing in the Separation at the former house, and Vandenhoff in the tragedy of Henriquez at the latter. They had but a partial success, and it would have been strange had the result been otherwise, considering the writer's adhesion to her former principles of construction and her lack of knowledge of stage requirements.

Baillie continued to write after she had reached a very advanced age, some of the poems in her new collection of Fugitive Verses having been produced when she was verging upon 80 years.

Lord Jeffrey wrote, under date 28 April 1840: "I forgot to tell you that we have been twice out to Hampstead, to hunt out Joanna Baillie, and found her the other day as fresh, natural, and amiable as ever, and as little like a tragic muse." 2 years later the whig editor again saw her (she being then 80 years of age), when he described her as "marvellous in health and spirits, and youthful freshness and simplicity of feeling, and not a bit deaf, blind, or torpid."

As the end of life approached she was prepared to meet it. "On Saturday, the day preceding that of her death, which occurred 23 Feb. 1851, Joanna expressed a strong desire to be released from life. She retired to bed as usual, complained of some uneasiness, and sank till the following afternoon, when, without suffering, in the full possession of her faculties, with sorrowing relations around her, in the act of devotion, she expired" ("Prefatory Memoir" to Collected Works).

Writing

File:BaillieMiscPlays.jpg

Title page of Joanna Baillie's Miscellaneous Plays (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1804)

The faculty of invention displayed in Joanna Baillie's writings is very great. Her blank verse also possesses a notable dignity and sonorousness which rank her works among English classical dramas, although they will never be popular on the stage. Her minor works have much beauty and delicacy. Some of her songs, as, for example, "Up, quit thy bower," "Woo'd, an' married, an' a'," "It fell on a mornin' when we were thrang," and "Saw ye Johnnie comin'?" will doubtless always live.

Mary Russell Mitford (Recollections) observes of Miss Baillie's tragedies that they "have a boldness and grasp of mind, a firmness of hand, and resonance of cadence, that scarcely seem within the reach of a female writer; whilst the tenderness and sweetness of her heroines, the grace of the love-scenes, and the trembling outgushings of sensibility, as in Orra, for instance, in the fine tragedy on Fear — would seem exclusively feminine if we did not know that a true dramatist — as Shakspeare or Fletcher — has the wonderful power of throwing himself into the character that he portrays.'

Plays of the Passions

In all her works there are many passages of true and impressive poetry, but the idea underlying her Plays on the Passions, of exhibiting the principal character as acting under the exclusive influence of a single passion, is artificial and untrue to nature.

In an elaborate preface to the Plays on the Passions, Miss Baillie defended herself for this somewhat novel venture in dramatic writing. Having first shown that the study of human nature and its passions has always had, and ever must have, an irresistible attraction for the individual man, the writer proceeds to maintain that the sympathetic instinct is our best and most powerful instructor. It teaches us to respect ourselves and our kind, and to dwell upon the noble, rather than the mean, view of human nature. Amidst all decoration and ornament in poetry, "let one simple trait of the human heart, one expression of passion, genuine and true to nature, be introduced, and it will stand forth alone in the boldness of reality, whilst the false and unnatural around it fade away upon every side like the rising exhalations of the morning."

But the plays gave rise to much controversy. The tone and substance of the objections of hostile critics were thus summed up by Campbell (Life of Mrs. Siddons):

If Joanna Baillie had known the stage practically, she would never have attached the importance she does to the development of single passions in single tragedies; and she would have invented more stirring incidents to justify the passion of her characters, and to give them that air of fatality which, though peculiarly predominant in the Greek drama, will also be found to a certain extent in all successful tragedies. Instead of this she tries to make all the passions of her main characters proceed from the wilful natures of the beings themselves. Their feelings are not precipitated by circumstances, like a stream down a declivity that leaps from rock to rock, but, for want of incident, they seem often like water on a level, without a propelling impulse.

In acting contrary to established usage the author no doubt handicapped herself from the point of view of the successful dramatist. By setting herself to delineate one master passion she deliberately put from her the means which generally insure dramatic success.

3 dramas in Miscellaneous Plays (1836) were in continuation of the Plays on the Passions, and completed the series. They consisted of a tragedy and a comedy illustrating the passion of jealousy, and a tragedy on the subject of remorse. An interesting circumstance is connected with 2 of the dramas. It appears that Sir Alexander Johnston, chief justice of Ceylon, being desirous of raising the minds of the inhabitants of that island, and of eradicating their vices by writings directed to that end, turned to the drama as being specially adapted to the purpose. Miss Baillie's Martyr he had already seen and welcomed as an auxiliary, and, in response to his desire for another drama of the same nature, the author wrote the Bride. Both dramas were translated into the Cingalese language. In the Bride the writer endeavored to set forth the christian principle of the forgiveness of injuries.

Other plays

Her Miscellaneous Plays (1804) were constructed more upon the usual lines, and the dramatist stated, in her apology for their appearance, that she wished to leave behind her a few plays, some of which might continue to be acted "even in our canvas theatres and barns"; while she also desired to keep her name in the remembrance of lovers of the drama generally.

The motive of the tragedy Rayner was to exhibit a young man of an amiable temper, tempted to join in the proposed commission of a detestable deed, and afterwards bearing himself with diffidence and modesty. The play had been written many years before. The scene of the tragedy was laid in Germany, and its turning-point was the crime of murder.

Poems

Metrical Legends appeared in 1821. The poems were suggested by her visit to Scotland in the previous year. The patriot Wallace is the principal personage in a poem, and Lady Griselda Baillie in another. There were also included some dramatic ballads cast in the ancient mould.

Poetic Miscellanies, published in 1823, contained poems by Scott, Catherine Fanshawe, Felicia Hemans, and others. This collection of poems, which was made with a charitable object, had a very satisfactory pecuniary result.

The various works of Joanna Baillie have been already referred to with the exception of a poem entitled Athalya Baee, printed originally for private circulation and published posthumously. It deals with a legend concerning the "wise and good" Indian sovereign who furnishes the title of the poem.

Critical introduction

by Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux

In reading Joanna Baillie’s poetry we find her to possess a quickness of observation that nearly supplies the place of insight; a strongly moralised temperament delighting in natural things; a vigorous, simple style. These are not especially dramatic qualities, and although she won her reputation through her plays, the poetry by which she is remembered is chiefly of a pastoral kind. She described herself, with justice, as ‘a poet of a simple and homely character,’ and her truest poems deal with simple and homely things: had she not persuaded herself that she possessed a more ambitious vocation she could have taken an honourable place among idyllic poets.

About the year 1790 Miss Baillie published her first little book of poems. It met with little notice, being, as she said, too rustic for those times when Mr. Hayley and Miss Seward were the chief poets south of the Tweed. Before the publication of her next work the great wave of German romanticism had burst on our literature, an impulse inspiring Scott and Southey with the spirit of heroic chivalry, and moving even this quiet singer of woods and fields to tell of supernatural horrors and of ‘the great explosions of Passion.’

In 1798 appeared the earliest volume of a Series of Plays: In which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind—each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy. These dramas are noticeable for the sustained vigour of their style and for the beautiful lyrics with which they are interspersed, but they have neither passion, interest, nor character. Few women possess the faculty of construction, and Joanna Baillie was not one of these; nor had she qualities rare enough to cover the sins of a wandering story. Even in the revelation of a passion she is more occupied with the moral to be inferred than with the feeling itself, and few of her dramatis personæ are more than the means to bring the moral to its conclusion.

Late in life Miss Baillie produced a book of Metrical Legends in the style of Walter Scott, but without his fine romance and fervour

Quite at the end of her career she republished her earliest poems with the addition of some Scottish songs under the title of Fugitive Verses. The little book, with its modest name and prefaced apology, is nevertheless the most enduring of her works. Her country songs, written in the language of her early home, have the best qualities of Scottish national poetry; their simplicity, their cautious humour, endeared them at once to the national heart; they have the shrewdness and the freshness of the morning airs, the homeliness of unsophisticated feeling. Such songs as "Woo’d and Married and a’," "The weary pund o’ Tow," "My Nanny O," and the lovely trysting song beginning "The gowan glitters on the sward" are among the treasures of Scottish minstrelsy. Only less delightful than these are her earlier sketches of country life, of cottage homes on summer and on winter days, of husbandman and housewife, of lovers happy and unhappy, of idle little village girls and boys—sketches touched with a certain homely grace whose greatest charm is its sincerity. Among these poems are a series of Farewells — the melancholy, the cheerful-tempered, the proud lover, each bids in turn an adieu to his mistress. Last of all comes the "poetical or sound-hearted" lover, and even while we smile at the unusual synonym we remember how natural a truth it must have been to her that used it.

Critical reception

Joanna Baillie commemorative plaque, London. Courtesy Flickr Commons.

Few women writers have received such universal commendation for their personal qualities and literary powers as Joanna Baillie. Her inventive faculties were widely remarked upon by “practically everybody whose opinion on a literary matter was worth anything” and she was on friendly terms with all the leading women writers of her time.

Walter Scott, when questioned respecting his own dramatic efforts, replied: "The Plays on the Passions have put me entirely out of conceit with my germanized brat (the House of Aspen); and should I ever again attempt dramatic composition, I would endeavour after the genuine old English model." Speaking on another occasion of Baillie's tragedy of Fear, he said that the language was distinguished by a rich variety of fancy which he knew no instance of excepting in Shakespeare; and he paid a very high tribute to its author, "the immortal Joanna," in his introduction to the 3rd canto of Marmion.

John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, recalled that in his childhood, Baillie's Constantine Paleologus appeared to him "one of the most glorious of human compositions" and that he continued to think it "one of the best dramas of the last two centuries."

Revered by poets on both sides of the Atlantic, she was placed by many of her contemporaries above all women poets except Sappho. According to Harriet Martineau she had "enjoyed a fame almost without parallel, and … been told every day for years, through every possible channel, that she was second only to Shakespeare." At one time her works were performed widely in both the United States and Great Britain.

But even when Martineau met her, in the 1830's, that fame seemed to belong to a bygone era. There were no revivals of her plays in the 19th or 20th centuries; and yet, as psychological studies, her tragedies would seem very suited to the intimacy of television or film.

It was not until the late 20th century that critics began to recognize the extent to which her psycholoanalytical depictions of the human psyche influenced Romantic literature. Scholars now recognize her importance as an innovator on the stage and as a dramatic theorist, and critics and literary historians of the Romantic period concerned with reassessing the place of women writers are acknowledging her significance.

Recognition

Beethoven - O swiftly glides the bonnie boat (Scottish Songs)

In 1899 a 16-foot-high memorial was erected in Joanna Baillie's memory in the churchyard of her birthplace at Bothwell.

Her poem "The Outlaw's Song" was anthologized in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

Her song "O swiftly glides the bonnie boat" was given a musical arrangement by Ludwig van Beethoven. 

2 songs fom Ethwald, "Hark! the cock crows" and "Once upon my cheek he said the roses grew," were set to music by English composer John Wall Callcott.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems: Wherein it is attempted to describe certain views of nature and of rustic manners London: J. Johnson, 1790; (facsimile edition), Oxford & New York: Woodstock Books, 1994.
• Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1821.
• The Complete Poetical Works. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832.
• Fugitive Verses. London: Edward Moson, 1840.
• Ahalya Baee: A poem. London: privately published, printed by Spottiswoodes & Shaw, 1849.
• Selected Poems, 1762-1851 (edited by Jennifer Breen). Manchester, UK, & New York: Manchester University Press : Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Plays

• A Series of Plays: In which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind: each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy. (3 volumes).
  • Volume I, , London: T. Caddell, Jr. & W. Davies, 1798;
  • Volume II, 1802;
  • Volume III, London:Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1812.
• Epilogue to the Theatrical Representation at Strawberry-Hill. [London?: 1800.
• The Country Inn: A comedy. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1804.
• Miscellaneous Plays. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1804.
• Basil: A tragedy. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1806; Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1811.
• De Montfort: A tragedy in five acts. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807; New York: David Longworth, at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1809.
• The Family Legend: A tragedy. Edinburgh: John Ballantyne for James Ballantyne, 1810.
• The Dream: A tragedy in prose, in three acs. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1812; New York: The Longworths at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1812.
• The Siege: A comedy in five acts. London : Printed for T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies, 1812;; New York: The Longworths at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1812.
• Orra: A tragedy in five acts. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1812; New York: The Longworths at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1812.
• The Beacon: A serious musical drama in two acts. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1821.
• The Martyr: A drama in three acts. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1826.
• The Bride: A drama in three acts. London: Henry Colbourn, 1828.
• Dramas. (3 volumes), London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1836. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III.
• Plays on the Passions (edited by Peter Duthie). Peterborough, ON, & Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2001.
• Six Gothic Dramas (edited by Christine A Colón). Chicago, IL: Valancourt Books, 2007.

Collected editions

• The Dramatic and Poetical Works. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851.
• A Selection of Plays and Poems (edited by Amanda Gilroy & Keith Hanley). London & Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto, 2002.

Edited

• A Collection of Poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1823.

Letters

• Collected Letters (edited by Judith Bailey Slagle). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press / London: Associated University Presses, 1999.
• Further Letters (edited by Thomas McLean). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

The Outlaw's Song Joanna Baillie Audiobook Short Poetry

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights

References

 Smith, George Barnett (1885) "Baillie, Joanna" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 2 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 414-417  . Wikisource, Web, Dec. 9, 2017.

External links

Poems

• "The Outlaw's Song"
• Joanna Baillie at the Poetry Foundation
• Baillie in A Book of Women's Verse: "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "The Kitten," Song: "The gowan glitters on the sward", "The Outlaw"
• Baillie in The English Poets: An anthology: "The Chough and Crow," "Fisherman's Song," Song: ‘They who may tell love’s wistful tale’, Song: ‘The bride she is winsome and bonny’
• Joanna Baillie at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
• Joanna Baillie at Poetry Nook (42 poems)
• Joanna Baillie at PoemHunter (196 poems)
• eLook Literature: Joanna Baillie - Contains a collection of poems

Audio / video

• Joanna Baillie poems at YouTube

Books

• Works by Joanna Baillie at Project Gutenberg
• Joanna Baillie at the Online Books Page
• Joanna Baillie at Amazon.com

About

• Joanna Baillie in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Joanna Baillie at NNDB
• Joanna Baillie (176201851) at The Literary Link
• Joanna Baillie at Scottish Women Poets
• Juggernaut Theatre - The Professional Female Playwright - Joanna Baillie

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Baillie, Joanna