Selected Bibliography:
Joanna Baillie

By Ken A. Bugajski,
Texas A&M University

Last revised 22 March 1999

Bibliographies

• Primary Works

  • Ken A. Bugajski, "Joanna Baillie: An Annotated Bibliography," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998).
  • Margaret S. Carhart, The Life and Works of Joanna Baillie, Yale Studies in English 64 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1923), 207-208.
  • L. W. Conolly and J. P. Wearing, English Drama and Theatre, 1800-1900: A Guide to Information Sources, American Literature, English Literature, and World Literatures in English Informations Guide, vol. 12 (Detroit: Gale, 1978), 71-73.
  • J. R. de J. Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliography, 1770-1835 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 11-15.
  • Marlon B. Ross, "Joanna Baillie," in British Romantic Poets, 1789-1832: First Series, ed. John R. Greenfield, Dictionary of Literary Biography 93 (Detroit: Gale, Bruccoli Clark, 1990), 3-4.
  • George Watson, ed., The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969-77), 3:363-64.
  
  

  Secondary Works

  • Ken A. Bugajski, "Joanna Baillie: An Annotated Bibliography," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998).
  • Margaret S. Carhart, The Life and Works of Joanna Baillie, Yale Studies in English 64 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1923), 209-15.
  • L. W. Conolly, and J. P Wearing, English Drama and Theatre, 1800-1900: A Guide to Information Sources, American Literature, English Literature, and World Literatures in English Informations Guide, vol. 12 (Detroit: Gale, 1978), 73-74.
  • Marlon B. Ross, "Joanna Baillie," in British Romantic Poets, 1789-1832: First Series, ed. John R. Greenfield, Dictionary of Literary Biography 93 (Detroit: Gale, Bruccoli Clark, 1990), 15.
  • George Watson, ed., The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969-77), 3:364.
  • Guy Wallace White, Joanna Baillie.
  
  

Editions

• Collected Works

  • The Complete Poetical Works (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1832).
  • The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie: Complete in One Volume (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1851).
  
  

• Individual Works

  • Dramas -- Individual Volumes

    • "The Family Legend" and "Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters" (1810 and 1821). Reprint (2 vols. in 1), ed. and introd. Donald H. Reiman. Romantic Context: Poetry. Significant Minor Poetry, 1789-1830. New York and London: Garland, 1976. Reprints the first edition of The Family Legend and an 1821 edition of Metrical Legends.
    • Miscellaneous Plays (1804). Reprint, ed. and introd. Donald H. Reiman. Romantic Context: Poetry. Significant Minor Poetry, 1789-1830. New York and London: Garland, 1977. Reprints the 1804 first edition.
    • A Series of Plays, 3 vols. (1798-1812). Reprint, ed. and introd. Donald H. Reiman. Romantic Context: Poetry. Significant Minor Poetry, 1789-1830. New York and London: Garland, 1977. Reprints the first edition of each volume.
    • A Series of Plays, 1798 (1798). Reprint, ed. and introd. Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford and New York: Woodstock, 1990). Reprints the first edition of the first volume of A Series of Plays.
    
    

  • Dramas -- Anthologies

    • Count Basil, in British Literature, 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 458-93. Prints the first edition of Count Basil as it appears in Jonathan Wordsworth's Woodstock facsimile edition.
    • De Monfort, in Seven Gothic Dramas, 1789-1825, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1992), 231-314. A critical edition based on the 1798 first edition text. Also considers the texts of a manuscript from 1800 (Huntington Library, Larpent Collection Ms. 1287) and Thomas Campbell's manuscript version (Huntington Library Ms. 32693).
    • The Family Legend, in Female Playwrights of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Adrienne Scullion (London: Dent; Rutland: Tuttle, 1996), 3-74. Reprints the 1810 first edition.
    
    

  • Poetry

    • "The Family Legend" and "Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters" (1810 and 1821). Reprint (2 vols. in 1), ed. and introd. Donald H. Reiman. Romantic Context: Poetry. Significant Minor Poetry, 1789-1830 (New York and London: Garland, 1976). Reprints the 1810 first edition of The Family Legend and an 1821 edition of Metrical Legends.
    • Joanna Baillie: Poems, 1790. Reprint, ed. Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford and New York: Woodstock, 1994). Reprints Poems: Wherein It Is Attempted to Describe Certain Views of Nature and of Rustic Manners; And Also, To Point Out, In Some Instances, the Different Influence Which the Same Circumstances Produce on Different Characters, Baillie's first published work.
    
    
  
  

• Correspondence

  • The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, ed. Judith Bailey Slagle, 2 vols. (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1998). Covers over 800 of Baillie's previously unpublished letters to various correspondents, including Mary Berry, Lady Byron, John Gibson Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott, George Thomson, and family members.
  • C[hester] L[ee] Lambertson, ed., "Speaking of Byron," Malahat Review 12 (1969): 18-42; 13 (1970): 24-46. Prints nine letters in volume twelve; subjects include Byron's Corsair, Byron's appreciation of De Monfort and his influence at Drury Lane, Scott's trip to France and subsequent poem on Waterloo, the Byrons' separation, Baillie's wishes for Scott to argue with Byron on Lady Byron's behalf, and the future marriage of Baillie's niece. Presents seven letters in volume thirteen; subjects include Baillie's trip to Europe with her niece, the characters of Lord and Lady Byron, contemporary writers such as Byron and Edgeworth, publishing poetry, and Scott's reactions to and Baillie's revisions of "Christopher Columbus."
  • W. H. O'Reilly, ed., "Unpublished Letters of Joanna Baillie to a Dumfriesshire Laird," Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society: Transactions and Journal of Proceedings 18 (1934): 10-27. Contains eleven letters (ranging from 1821 to 1827) from Baillie to General Alexander Dirom, a military leader, author, and friend. Subjects include mutual friends, invitations to visit, and literary matters such as: Baillie's thanks to Dirom for kind words about her Metrical Legends and The Martyr, her positive feedback on Dirom's own work, a discussion of Baillie's meetings with the publisher, Longman, on Dirom's behalf, a mention of Ahalya Baee as a "perfect female character," and a solicitation to Dirom for a poem to include in her 1823 A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript.
  • Denys Sutton, ed., "Joanna Baillie, and Sir George Beaumont, Bart," Notes and Queries 174 (1938): 146-48. Includes three letters from Baillie to Sir George Beaumont in which Baillie solicits Beaumont's influence to help a Mr. Bell's election to the Royal Academy.
  
  

• Archives and Depositories

  • Abbotsford Library. Edinburgh, Scotland. Includes The Family Legend: A Tragedy. Ms. Press V, Shelf I.
  • Bodleian Library. Oxford University, England. Contains letters written between 1814 and 1850.
  • British Library. London, England. Possesses Plays: [submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office]. Ms. 42934-42935, and nearly eighty letters (1804-1842) to George Thomson for whom Baillie provided song lyrics.
  • Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre and Swiss Cottage Library. London, England. Includes letters dating from 1813-1843, for which Margaret Holford Hodson and William Beattie appear as principal correspondents.
  • Edinburgh University Library. Edinburgh, Scotland. Owns a dozen letters written to various correspondents, Sir Walter Scott among them.
  • Houghton Library, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Contains nearly forty letters to Andrews Norton.
  • Henry E. Huntington Library. California, United States. Includes: The Beacon: A Serious Musical Drama in Two Acts. Larpent Collection of Plays Ms. 1846; Constantine Paleologus. Larpent Collection of Plays Ms. 1557; Plays: [submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office] (the Location Register states that the plays are dated from 1808-15, but offers neither a manuscript number nor details on which plays are included) and less than two dozen letters.
  • New York Public Library. Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. New York, United States. Includes revisions for De Monfort, manuscripts for "Fy, Let Us A' to the Wedding," "On the Death of a Very Dear Friend," and several letters.
  • National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland. Possesses a large number of Baillie's letters, with over 150 to Sir Walter Scott alone; other correspondents include Anne Elliot, Anna Jameson, and John Gibson Lockhart.
  • Royal College of Surgeons. London, England. Includes [Poems]. Ms. Vol. 1.44-48, 1.75, and Vol. 2.69; Prose Writings. Ms. Vol. 9.10 and 9.68-9; and several familial letters as well as some to William Sotheby and Mary Berry
  • University of Glasgow Library, Glasgow, Scotland. Contains several letters to Lady Campbell, Baillie's cousin.
  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. London, England. Possesses Memoirs Written to Please My Nephew William Baillie (Ms. 5613/68/1-6) and many letters to family.
  
  

• Selected Teaching Editions and Anthologies

  • M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Norton, 1993). Reprints "Up! quit thy bower" and "Woo'd and Married and A'."
  • Isobel Armstrong and Joseph Bristow, with Cath Sharrock, eds., Nineteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 50-73. Prints "A Winter's Day," "A Summer's Day," "To a Child," "London," "Lines to a Teapot," "Address to a Steamvessel," and "Volunteer's Song, Written in 1803."
  • Jennifer Breen, ed., Women Romantic Poets, 1785-1832: An Anthology, Everyman's Library (London: Dent; Rutland: Tuttle, 1992), 43-71. Includes "A Winter's Day," "A Summer's Day," "A Reverie," "A Disappointment," "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "A Child to His Sick Grandfather," "Hooly and Fairly," and "What voice is this, thou evening gale!"
  • Jeffrey N. Cox, ed., Seven Gothic Dramas, 1789-1825 (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1992), 231-314. Prints De Monfort.
  • Paula R. Feldman, ed., British Women Poets of the Romantic Era: An Anthology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997). Prints "Wind," "Thunder," "The Kitten," "Up! Quit Thy Bower," "Woo'd and Married and A'," "Address to a Steam Vessel," "The Sun is Down," "Lines to a Teapot," and "The Maid of Llanwellyn."
  • Joyce Fullard, ed., British Women Poets 1660-1800: An Anthology (Troy: Whitston, 1990), 56-57, 146-48, 228-29, 458-63. Presents "London," an excerpt from "Address to the Muses," and several songs: "Child, with many a childish wile," "Upon her saddle's quilted seat," "Wake awhile and pleasant be," "Come, form we round a cheerful ring," "O swiftly glides the bonny boat," and "High is the tower, and the watch-dogs bay."
  • Margaret Randolph Higonnet, ed., British Women Poets of the 19th Century (New York: Meridian-Penguin, 1996), 143-67. Prints "A Winter's Day," "A Summer's Day," "A Reverie," "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "Address to the Muses," "London," and "Verses Written in February 1827."
  • Catherine Kerrigan, ed., An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1991), 172-76. Includes "Poverty Parts Good Company," "Tam O' the Lin," "Woo'd and Married and A'," and "The Shepherd's Song."
  • Roger Lonsdale, ed., Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 429-45. Reprints "A Reverie," "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "A Child to His Sick Grandfather," "The Horse and His Rider," and excerpts from "A Winter Day [sic]" "A Summer Day [sic]," "An Address to the Muses," and "Night Scenes of Other Times."
  • Roger Lonsdale, ed., The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse (Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), 770-75. Includes "A Disappointment," "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "A Child to His Sick Grandfather," and "The Horse and His Rider."
  • David McCordick, ed., Scottish Literature: An Anthology, 3 vols. (New York: Lang, 1996), 2:217-25. Contains "Disappointment," "Woo'd and Married and A'," "Fy, Let Us A' to the Wedding," "It Fell on a Morning," "The gowan glitters on the sward," "Love's Wistful Tale," "Wake, Lady," and "The Black Cock."
  • Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak, eds., British Literature, 1780-1830 (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 458-93. Prints Count Basil.
  • David Perkins, ed., English Romantic Writers, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1995). Includes "A Reverie," "A Mother to Her Waking Infant," "Woo'd and Married and A'," "The Ghost of Fadon," "The Kitten," and passages from the Introductory Discourse.
  • Adrienne Scullion, Female Playwrights of the Nineteenth Century, Everyman's Library (London: Dent; Rutland: Tuttle, 1996), 3-74. Prints The Family Legend.
  • Robert W. Uphaus and Gretchen M. Foster, eds., The "Other" Eighteenth Century: English Women of Letters, 1660-1800 (East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1991), 343-58. Prints excerpts from the Introductory Discourse from the 1799 second edition of A Series of Plays.
  • Duncan Wu, ed., Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 254-60. Prints "The gowan glitters on the sward," "What voice is this, thou evening gale," and "Tam o' the Lin."
  • Duncan Wu, ed., Romanticism: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 153-54. Prints a brief passage from the Introductory Discourse.
  
  

Biographies

• Margaret S. Carhart, The Life and Works of Joanna Baillie, Yale Studies in English 64 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1923). Offers the only full length biography of Baillie. Divides the book into six sections: "The Life of Joanna Baillie," "Literary Background," "Dramatic Theory," "Stage History," "Non-Dramatic Poetry," and "Joanna Baillie's Place in Literature." In "Life," emphasizes Baillie's literary milieu and her religion. In "Literary Background," traces both past and contemporary influences on Baillie's work, including contemporary history books, Greek drama, Robert Burns, and Shakespeare, while in "Dramatic Theory," heavily quotes and paraphrases Baillie's Introductory Discourse. In "Stage History," details dates of performance, provides cast lists, surveys public reception, and notes revisions made during rehearsals for several of Baillie's plays. In "Non-Dramatic Poetry," offers a cursory look at main themes in Baillie's poetry. In the final chapter, concludes that Baillie "stands to-day as the greatest Scotch dramatist."
• Donald Carswell, Sir Walter: A Four Part Study in Biography (Scott, Hogg, Lockhart, Joanna Baillie) (London: Murray, 1930). Provides a chapter on Baillie's life. Emphasizes her family -- especially her father and brother -- and her early life. Details William Sotheby's introduction of Baillie to Sir Walter Scott and the subsequent friendship between the latter two. Also considers the literary stir caused by A Series of Plays, Scott's negative reaction to Baillie's A View of the General Tenour ..., and Baillie's old age. Suggests that Baillie never achieved acclaim beyond the literati, and asserts that this praise resulted from Baillie's dramatic ideas, not her execution of them in her plays. Maintains that her plays, always thought to be unstageable, are, in the twentieth century, "not even readable."
• Paula R. Feldman, ed., Introduction to "Joanna Baillie," in British Women Poets of the Romantic Era: An Anthology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997), 21-26. Provides an economical, inclusive, and sound biography of Baillie's life and publications. While discussing the publications of each of her volumes, consistently ties in contemporary reactions to Baillie's work to illustrate her popularity and high esteem.
• Florence MacCunn, Sir Walter Scott's Friends (London: Blackwood, 1909; New York: Lane, 1910). Argues that Baillie was an original thinker whose sheltered life harmed the realism of her depictions of the passions. Details Baillie's family history and her literary friends. Gives special attention to Scott's friendship with Baillie, and argues that his praise of her is overgenerous.
• Mary McKerrow, "Joanna Baillie and Mary Brunton: Women of the Manse," in Living by the Pen: Early British Women Writers, ed. Dale Spender, Athene Series (New York: Teachers College, 1992), 160-74. Offers a brief literary biography, noting the publications of Baillie's works. Asserts that Baillie's greatest achievement was to write wide-ranging tragedies depicting the varieties of human passion while living "a relatively sheltered life." Discusses Baillie's anxiety regarding her participation in the male literary world.
• Henry P. Tappan, Illustrious Personages of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1853). Provides a biographical chapter on Baillie with a focus on family members not found in many other sources. States that Baillie's plays are "better suited to the sober perusal of the closet than the bustle and animation of the theatre." Praises Baillie's moral example, Christian faith, and her clear and forceful style.

Criticism

• General Studies

  • Catherine B. Burroughs, Closet Stages: Joanna Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Romantic Women Writers (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). Explores early nineteenth-century British women writers' representations of themselves, of other women, and their theories on the theatrical representation of women to show the influence contemporary gender expectations produced on dramatic practice. Uses Baillie as a representative female theatre theorist to demonstrate "the problems women theorists encounter when moving from 'the closet' to engage critics in public space." Emphasizes Baillie's dramatic and theoretical work as a means to examine her negotiation of self and gender representation in public and domestic spheres. States that Baillie's concern with depicting scenes from the closet connects with her desire to create intimate contact with the audience, her participation in and depiction of private theatricals, and her wish to alter theatre construction. Considers De Monfort, Basil, and The Tryal in detail.
  • William D. Brewer, "Joanna Baillie and Lord Byron," Keats-Shelley Journal 44 (1995): 165-81. Examines the biographical and literary connections between Baillie and Byron, arguing that their literary relationship explains Byron's "attitudes towards the roles of gender and power in female literary production." Explores Byron's admiration for and support of Baillie, and links this respect to Baillie's ability to create masculine characters such as Ethwald, Basil, and De Monfort. Suggests that through these characters, Baillie influences Byron's Manfred and Marino Faliero.
  • Stuart Curran, "Romantic Poetry: The I Altered," in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1988), 185-207. Asserts that a masculine bias in Romantic studies has caused the marginalization of women writers such as Anna Barbauld and Charlotte Smith. Uses Baillie as a representative example of a highly published woman writer now largely forgotten by the academic community. Argues that of all texts, Baillie's A Series of Plays "exerted the most direct practical and theoretical force" on Romantic drama.
  • Ellen Donkin, Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1829 (London: Routledge, 1995). In the final chapter, traces reasons for Baillie's rise and subsequent decline in popularity. Argues that Baillie's anonymous publication -- which concealed her sex -- played a large role in her initial fame. Asserts that Richard Sheridan's reluctance to stage Baillie's plays, Baillie's consistent refusal to attend rehearsals, and male critics' bias against women playwrights all contributed to her fall from public favor.
  • Joseph W. Donohue, Jr., Theatre in the Age of Kean, Drama and Theatre Studies (Totowa: Rowan and Littlefield, 1975). States that, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, Baillie holds the view that a connection exists between human nature and action. Claims that Baillie's dramaturgy, as expressed in the Introductory Discourse, remains "essentially untheatrical" as evidenced by the limited production of her plays. Asserts that De Monfort marks a moment of innovation for nineteenth-century Gothic drama because in the play, Baillie takes special care to develop a complex psychology for the title character.
  • Janice Patten, "Joanna Baillie, A Series of Plays," in A Companion to Romanticism, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford and Malden: Blackwell, 1998). 169-78. Gives a brief biography and family history, and asserts that in her plays, Baillie suggests that "all cognition is based on passion," an idea itself based in the medicine familiar to Baillie's two uncles and brother. Details the psychological motivations in De Monfort and in the title character himself, and briefly considers the principal characters in The Family Legend, Constantine Paleologus, Ethwald, The Martyr, and Orra.
  • Donald H. Reiman, Introduction to "The Family Legend" and "Metrical Legends of the Exalted Characters," by Joanna Baillie. Romantic Context: Poetry. Significant Minor Poetry, 1789-1830. New York and London: Garland, 1976. v-viii. Provides a brief description of Baillie's life, and surveys nineteenth-century reactions to her work. Claims that Baillie's blank verse is among the best of the Romantic period because it is "simple and natural, supple and original." Argues that like William Wordsworth, Baillie believes "ordinary life" possesses the potential for both "heroism and tragedy." Believes that Baillie may have achieved more if her later works had not been influenced by Sir Walter Scott's suggestions for subject matter. Reprinted as the Introduction for Reiman's reprint editions of Miscellaneous Plays and A Series of Plays.
  • W. L. Renwick, English Literature: 1789-1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). Dismisses Baillie as one who lacks creativity and attempts to write beyond her ability. Provides the often quoted criticism that "No real dramatist would deliberately sit down to write a whole series of Plays on the Passions."
  
  

• Gender Studies

  • Tracy C. Davis, "The Sociable Playwright and the Representative Citizen," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998). Argues that to reach a proper understanding women's plays, they must be considered in the context of women's lives. Briefly considers Baillie as a playwright who wrote at home, but did so in order that she might more carefully control the appearance of her plays in public.
  • Amanda Gilroy, "From Here to Alterity: The Geography of Femininity in the Poetry of Joanna Baillie," in A History of Scottish Women's Writing, ed. Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997), 143-57. Drawing on Frederick Rowton's 1848 anthology of women's poetry and on contemporary reviews of Baillie's work, examines "The Legend of Lady Griseld Baillie," "Sir Maurice: A Ballad," and Ahalya Baee to show how Baillie "negotiates the boundaries of space allotted to femininity." Considering the locations and events of each poem, asserts that "Lady Griseld" and "Sir Maurice" circumscribe the feminine within the domestic sphere as well as under patriarchal power. Maintains that Ahalya Baee challenges the notion of separate gender spheres put forth by the earlier two poems.
  • Anne K. Mellor, "A Criticism of Their Own: Romantic Women Literary Critics," in Questioning Romanticism, ed. John Beer (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995), 29-48. Asserts that Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Mary Wollstonecraft and other women writers upheld coherent aesthetic theories opposed to those advanced by their male contemporaries. Demonstrates that women espoused "the workings of a rational mind," a fluid self immersed in a social context, and reform through communal action. States that the Plays on the Passions show the growth of feelings within a social context, which creates a connection between characters and audience, eventually leading to the moral instruction of the latter.
  • Anne K. Mellor, "Joanna Baillie and the Counter-Public Sphere," Studies in Romanticism 33 (1994): 559-67. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas's concept of the "public sphere" along with Rita Felski's idea of the "counter-public sphere," maintains that Baillie uses "the theatre to re-stage and revise the social construction of gender." Argues that by emphasizing the counter-public sphere -- the domestic and the personal realm -- Baillie explores the relationship between honor and love. Asserts that this, a conflict of the domestic sphere, directly influences the public sphere. Further argues that Baillie characterizes the "masculine public sphere" as dominated by self-destructive egotism and pride while she portrays the feminine counter-public sphere with a basis in domestic action and nurturing affection.
  • Marjean Purinton, "Revising Romanticism by Inscripting Women Playwrights," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998). Examines the ways in which consideration of women playwrights has changed perceptions of literary history, academic pursuits, teaching methods, the canon, and ideas about performance. Considers Baillie as a central figure in the reevaluation, and further suggests staging her plays as a means to greater insight into Romantic drama.
  • Marjean Purinton, Romantic Ideology Unmasked: The Mentally Constructed Tyrannies in Dramas of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Joanna Baillie (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1994). In the chapter on Baillie, demonstrates that she critiques gender "not as a biological function but as a cultural practice." Citing Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Hays, Hannah More, and Clara Reeves, shows an oppressor/oppressed relationship between genders to be a widespread concern of nineteenth-century women. Argues that the concerns of these women writers "appear as latent content" in De Monfort and Count Basil. Interprets the two plays as works which depict men attempting to control women who are struggling to exert their independent will.
  • Marlon B. Ross, The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989). Depicts Baillie as a playwright caught in the middle of several conflicts. Argues that Baillie's dramatic theory exists between eighteenth-century sentimentality and rationality. Asserts that, like Wordsworth, Baillie attempts to integrate emotion and thought. Suggests that Baillie examines the masculine world of public affairs and its relationship to internal feelings. Concludes that Baillie believes that the lack of interaction between these two points of view threatens the stability of society.
  • Guy Wallace White, "Correcting a Cursory Glance: Joanna Baillie's Literary Contribution." Surveys nineteenth-century appraisals of Baillie's work and questions why, after such positive comments, Baillie remains largely forgotten. Asserts that Baillie's ideas were "fervently religious, quasi-feminist, anti-canonical, didactic and controversial" and that these views contribute to her canonical exclusion. Also considers Carhart's biography of Baillie, claiming that social restrictions hindered Carhart from presenting a complete and accurate picture of her subject. For an annotation of the rest of White's Web site, see below.
  
  

• Introductory Discourse (1798)

  • William D. Brewer, "The Prefaces of Joanna Baillie and William Wordsworth," Friend: Comment on Romanticism, 1, nos. 2-3 (1991-92): 34-47. Argues that although Baillie's Introductory Discourse shares similarities with William Wordsworth's Preface of 1880, Baillie avoids Wordsworth's "masculinist focus on the introspective process of an individual poet." Asserts that Baillie and Wordsworth advocate both using an unostentatious style to depict common events and also portraying the passions as motivation for human behavior. Shows that Baillie focuses on connecting with the audience while Wordsworth emphasizes the poet's independent and isolated mind. Drawing on the theories of Carol Gilligan and Nancy Chodorow, argues that this contrast derives from the gender difference between the two authors.
  • Catherine B. Burroughs, "English Romantic Women Writers and Theatre Theory: Joanna Baillie's Prefaces to the Plays on the Passions," in Re-visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837, ed. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 274-96. Asserts that Baillie's focus on "the potentiality of 'the closet'" anticipates modern feminist theatre. Following a survey of the theatre theories of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Russell Mitford, argues that Baillie attempts to create "a drama that actually dramatizes scenes from a character's closet," and hopes to foreground the domestic sphere and the feminine experience. Shows that Baillie's theatrical preferences, such as smaller stages, less overemotive acting, and better lighting share affinities with contemporary feminist and lesbian theatre, for these conditions help create a more personal and intimate environment. Further states that both Baillie and contemporary feminist and lesbian writers make women's lives the center of their dramas. Appears in a revised version as chapter three of Closet Stages.
  • Andrea Henderson, "Passion and Fashion in Joanna Baillie's 'Introductory Discourse,'" PMLA 112 (1997): 198-213. Argues that Baillie's emphasis on the passions arises from the "sympathy and sentimentality" of nineteenth-century business and consumer practices. Claims that Baillie's concern with physical appearance connects to a nineteenth-century focus on physiognomy. States that Baillie's artistic program "promotes a modern consumerist form of desire" which emphasizes both procurement and ownership of art objects.
  • Mary F. Yudin, "Joanna Baillie's Introductory Discourse as a Precursor to Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads," Compar(a)ison 1 (1994): 101-11. Argues that Baillie's Introductory Discourse and William Wordsworth's Preface are linked by a focus on both "middle and lower class subjects" and "quotidian events." Notes that both authors concern themselves with the depiction and description of authentic emotions. Argues that the Introductory Discourse raised public expectations which Baillie's subsequent plays failed to reach, thus contributing to her fall from popularity and eventual exclusion from the canon.
  
  

• Pedagogy

  • Catherine B. Burroughs, "Joanna Baillie's Poetic Aesthetic: Passion and 'the Plain Order of Things,'" in Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt and Harriet Kramer Linkin (New York: MLA, 1997), 135-40. Claims that like her dramas, Baillie's poems focus on the domestic closet as a mirror of societal conflicts. States that "Lines to a Teapot" concerns both the slave trade and the marriage market. Maintains that emphasizing the conflict inherent in domestic life, as Baillie does, helps students better understand the relationship between their educations and their lives.
  • Greg Kucich, "Staging History: Teaching Romantic Intersections of Drama, History, and Gender," in Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt and Harriet Kramer Linkin (New York: MLA, 1997), 88-96. Shows how Baillie may be used in a course on Romanticism and gender. Places Baillie with other women writers -- such as Maria Edgeworth, Catherine Macaulay, and Felicia Hemans -- who attempt to create an "emotional interiority" distinct from masculine history. Shows that emotion can, for Baillie, manifest itself in communal expressions of feeling, as at the end of De Monfort.
  
  

• Plays

  • General Studies

    • Michael Booth, ed., Introduction, English Plays of the Nineteenth Century, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), 1:1-28. Portrays Baillie as representative of Gothic melodrama. Asserts that Baillie's verse often deteriorates into "leisurely poetry for its own sake" and that De Monfort and Henriquez display the characteristic emotional excesses of Romantic theatre. Reprinted in Prefaces to English Nineteenth-Century Theatre. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1980.
    • Alasdair Cameron, "Scottish Drama in the Nineteenth Century," in The History of Scottish Literature, ed. Douglas Gifford, 4 vols. (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1988), 3:429-42. Places Baillie among the foremost nineteenth-century Scottish dramatists, but argues that Baillie's plays suffer from an "awkward, overblown, and anglicized poetic style, which is rarely fitted to the subject." Criticizes Baillie's inconsistent use of Scots in The Phantom, but allows that in Witchcraft, Baillie employs a more authentic and vibrant use of Scots.
    • Thomas C. Crochunis, "The Function of the Dramatic Closet at the Present Time," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998). Examines different approaches to the term "closet drama," and uses Baillie as an example of an author whose plays are neither strictly closet dramas nor plays for the stage. Argues that Baillie and other women dramatists wrote "closet dramas" in order to reach a specific set of readers.
    • Bertrand Evans, Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley, University of California Publications 18 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1947). In the eleventh chapter, calls for a revaluation of Baillie's plays. Argues that Baillie is quintessentially Gothic because she crowds most of her plays with dark and gloomy castle and convent settings, secret passageways, ruins, tolling bells, and remorseful and emotional protagonists. Asserts that in Orra, the title character's fear and eventual madness are due to the combined effects of these Gothic elements.
    • Michael Gamer, "National Supernaturalism: Joanna Baillie, Germany, and the Gothic Drama," Theatre Survey 38, no. 2 (1997): 49-88. Argues that Baillie attempts to combine spectacle and psychology, thus negotiating the boundary between public popularity and critical approval. Asserts that the creation of characters haunted by nothing "other than their own minds" allows Baillie to use Gothic tropes while directing audience attention away from the spectacle and towards the psychological perception of the supernatural. Further examines M. G. Lewis' Castle Spectre and Angus von Kotzebue's plays to demonstrate nineteenth-century critical bias against German conventions. Claims that in Ethwald, Baillie distances herself from such influences by "creating a series of dualisms ... good versus evil, truth versus falsehood, Protestantism versus Catholicism, and Britain versus the Continent." Considers Ethwald, De Monfort, Rayner, and The Phantom in detail.
    • William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818); repr., "Lectures on the English Poets" and "The Spirit of the Age" (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1910), 1-168. Briefly criticizes Baillie's efforts to depict one passion per play as "heresies of dramatic art." Praises De Monfort for its "unity of interest," but heavily censures her comedies, especially The Election, for Baillie's simplistic and heavy-handed moral didacticism.
    • Om Prakash Mathur, The Closet Drama of the Romantic Revival, Salzburg Studies in English Literature. Poetic Drama and Poetic Theory 35 (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1978). In a brief section on Baillie, contends that Baillie's compartmentalization of the passions, stereotypical plots, and weak characterizations result in dramatic failure. Suggests that the Miscellaneous Plays are her most successful works due to their variations in plot and character, and asserts that Baillie's strongest attributes are her depictions of crowd scenes and her poetic language. Considers The Election, De Monfort, Basil, Rayner, Constantine Paleologus, and The Family Legend.
    • Allardyce Nicoll, A History of Early Nineteenth-Century Drama, 1800-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1930). In a chapter entitled "The Legitimate Drama," asserts that although Baillie's plays suffer from lapses in coherent plot construction and from too heavy a reliance on Elizabethan diction, her consistent development of one central emotion makes her plays "landmarks ... in English theatre." Argues that Baillie's plays show potential because her dramatic technique improves with maturity, but states that Elizabethan influences continually hold back her art. Briefly considers De Monfort, Ethwald (part one), Constantine Paleologus, The Family Legend, Orra, and The Dream. Reprinted in volume four of A History of English Drama, 1660-1900, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1955).
    • Allardyce Nicoll, A History of Late Eighteenth-Century Drama, 1750-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1927). Briefly considers the first volume of A Series of Plays, citing Baillie's focus on passion over character, her "tendency ... towards the romantically abstract," and her false diction as flaws fatal to her plays. Reprinted in volume three of A History of English Drama, 1660-1900, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1955).
    • M. Norton, "The Plays of Joanna Baillie," Review of English Studies, o.s. 23 (1947): 131-43. Affirms that Baillie's most revolutionary technique is her consistent focus on only one humor per play. Believes that this innovation also appears Baillie's greatest flaw because, "In seeking to reveal the passion, she loses sight of the man." States that the development of a single isolated emotion cannot sustain the interest of an audience full of many competing and conflicting emotions.
    • Terrence Tobin, Plays by Scots, 1660-1800 (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1974). In a chapter on "Scots Abroad," asserts that Baillie's focus on a solitary emotion creates artificial and unsympathetic protagonists because she limits them to an "idée fixe." States that De Monfort most nearly fulfills Baillie's dramatic theory, but argues that the play fails because De Monfort never acts nobly, even though other characters portray him as such. Asserts that Jane De Monfort is the best conceived of Baillie's supporting characters because she is complex and virtuous but not without fault. Briefly considers Basil and The Tryal, criticizing them for their lack of complexity.
    • Jonathan Wordsworth, ed., Introduction to Joanna Baillie: Poems (Oxford and New York: Woodstock, 1994), n.p. Argues that, like the dramas which were to follow, Baillie's poems attempt to depict one prevailing passion or mood. Places Baillie within the Scottish poetic tradition. Notes her influence on William Wordsworth, and claims that Baillie anticipated -- if not invented -- the lyrical ballad form. Reprinted with revisions in The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age (Poole and Washington, D.C.: Woodstock, 1997), 58-66.
    • Jonathan Wordsworth, Introduction to Joanna Baillie: A Series of Plays (Oxford and New York: Woodstock, 1990), n.p. Considers the success of A Series of Plays, and links Baillie's Introductory Discourse and De Monfort to William Wordsworth's Preface and early poetry. Briefly considers Count Basil, The Tryal, and De Monfort, asserting that the last best fulfills Baillie's theatre theory. Reprinted with revisions in Ancestral Voices: Fifty Books from the Romantic Period (Oxford: Woodstock, 1991).
    
    

  • Basil

    • Catherine B. Burroughs, "The English Romantic Closet: Women Theatre Artists, Joanna Baillie, and Basil," Nineteenth-Century Contexts 19 (1995): 125-49. Argues that Basil explores a woman's participation in both "the informal stage of private life and the public arena of formal theatres." Drawing on the writings of Lord Byron and Mary Russell Mitford, shows that female playwrights and actors were caught between the societal conditioning for women to withdraw from attention and a personal desire to work under the public gaze in the theatre. Asserts that Basil's Victoria attempts "to experiment with the performance of femininity" in private and public spaces and that Basil himself can neither negotiate nor differentiate the public and private arenas. Appears in a revised version as part of chapter four in Closet Stages.
    
    

  • De Montfort

    • Catherine B. Burroughs, "'Out of the Pale of Social Kindred Cast': Conflicted Performance Styles in Joanna Baillie's De Monfort," in Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices, ed. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley (Hanover: Univ. Press of New England, 1995), 223-35. Argues that through the characters of Jane De Monfort and De Monfort, respectively, Baillie sets the Neoclassic acting style, here termed "statuesque stasis," against German Romanticism's "emotive" technique. Claims that De Monfort represents an anti-social force because he wishes to disrupt the interactions of polite society, which Baillie portrays most clearly through Jane De Monfort and Rezenvelt. States that Jane's and De Monfort's struggles to negotiate complex human relationships and gender roles mirror Baillie's artistic efforts to create a drama of the private domestic realm also appropriate for the public stage. Appears in a revised version as part of chapter four in Closet Stages.
    • Jeffrey N. Cox, ed., Introduction to Seven Gothic Dramas, 1789-1825 (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1992). Drawing on records of Sarah Siddons' portrayal of Jane De Monfort, argues that Baillie critiques Gothic conventions and gender stereotypes. Asserts that the tension between Jane and the male characters of De Monfort frustrates audience expectations for an emotive yet passive woman. Places Baillie within the Gothic genre while showing how she works against the restrictive roles for women within that genre.
    • A. G. Insch, "Joanna Baillie's De Monfort in Relation to Her Theory of Tragedy," Durham University Journal 23 (1961): 114-20. Argues that Baillie's plays fail because the dramatist places depicting a passion and stating a moral message above developing character and plot. Maintains that this pattern results in a one-dimensional protagonist, De Monfort, while Rezenvelt appears more real because he need not be ruled by one passion alone. Argues that De Monfort succeeds because Baillie invests the title character with pride as his tragic flaw.
    • Daniel P. Watkins, "Class, Gender, and Social Motion in Joanna Baillie's De Monfort," Wordsworth Circle 23, no. 2 (1992): 109-17. Revises and expands "The Gait Disturb'd," below. Adds that in De Monfort, real and imagined knocking on doors represents the aristocracy's psychological anxiety about the rising middle class. Argues that the decadent party scenes function as the aristocracy's (futile) attempts to escape society's dissolving heirarchies.
    • Daniel P. Watkins, "'The Gait Disturb'd of Wealthy, Honour'd Men': Joanna Baillie's De Monfort," Nineteenth-Century Contexts 15 (1991): 143-51. Argues that the class and gender conflicts of De Monfort highlight Baillie's political awareness. Claims that the personal conflict between De Monfort and Rezenvelt mirrors early nineteenth-century class conflicts. Concludes that De Monfort's psychological instability reflects the "rapidly-increasing social change" of the nineteenth century.
    • Daniel P. Watkins, A Materialist Critique of English Romantic Drama (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1993). In the chapter on Baillie (which further refines the previous two essays), argues for Baillie's primary importance because she dramatizes the "social and historical pressures" of her era. Drawing on Marxist theory, states that the main conflict in De Monfort is one of class, exemplified through the aristocratic De Monfort and his bourgeois rival, Rezenvelt. Also asserts that the second important struggle for power occurs between genders, with women subject to men regardless of class. Concludes that De Monfort is the embodiment of the aristocracy, caught between a deteriorating class structure and the collapse of distinct gender roles.
    
    

  • The Family Legend

    • Adrienne Scullion, "Some Women of the Nineteenth-century Scottish Theatre: Joanna Baillie, Frances Wright, and Helen MacGregor," in A History of Scottish Women's Writing, ed. Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997), 158-78. Defines Baillie's place in nineteenth-century Scottish theatre, and states that she helped initiate Scottish National Drama with The Family Legend. Claims that while Baillie manages The Family Legend's stage craft well, she produces a contrived plot and stereotypical characters. Briefly considers Witchcraft as a more complex and interesting drama. Also explores the gender dynamic in Baillie's work, placing her in alignment with Anne K. Mellor's idea of feminine Romanticism.
    
    

  • The Tryal

    • Catherine B. Burroughs, "'A Reasonable Woman's Desire': The Private Theatrical and Joanna Baillie's The Tryal," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38 (1996): 265-84. Places The Tryal in the context of privately produced plays, and argues that such productions allowed women to participate in the theatre as directors and stage managers. Claims that Agnes, by directing the private play within The Tryal, attempts "to dramatize domestic space" as a way "to control the representation of women's social reality." Asserts that Withrington acts as a masculine model who views private theatricals as destabilizing the domestic feminine space. Appears in a revised version as chapter five of Closet Stages.
    
    
  
  

• Poetry

  • Valentina Bold, "Beyond 'The Empire of the Gentle Heart': Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century," in A History of Scottish Women's Writing, ed. Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997), 246-61. Briefly considers Baillie's poetry, and states that, although contemporaries overrated her poetry, they believed that Baillie produced a "moral influence" on literature.
  • Kirsteen McCue, "Women and Song, 1750-1850," in A History of Scottish Women's Writing, ed. Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997), 58-70. Briefly considers Baillie as a Scottish songwriter, placing her among other writers such as Anne Grant, Elizabeth Hamilton, and Jean Adam. Asserts that songs allow socially refined women -- like Baillie -- "to grasp the physical immediacy" of traditional ballads. States that Baillie's "Hooly and Fairly" breaks with tradition by presenting a sarcastic and derisive view of marriage.
  • Fiona Robertson, ed., Introduction to Joanna Baillie's "Lines on the Death of Sir Walter Scott," Scott, in vol. 3 of Lives of the Great Romantics II: Keats, Coleridge, and Scott, By Their Contemporaries (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1997), 17-20. Describes the friendship between the two writers, and claims that Scott and Baillie viewed each other as literary equals and did not, contrary to some current criticism, see their relationship as that of a master and apprentice. Argues that in "Lines on the Death of Sir Walter Scott," Baillie portrays her friend as the admirable and distinguished lord of Abbotsford while she simultaneously portrays him as a man who easily mixes with and offers friendship to all classes of people.
  
  

• Productions

  • Paul Ranger, "Terror and Pity reign in every Breast": Gothic Drama in the London Patent Theatres, 1750-1820 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1991). Discusses William Capon's set design for the first production of De Monfort. Notes that Baillie's stage directions innovatively suggest hand held lanterns to help illuminate actors' faces more clearly. Surveys Edmund Kean's and John Philip Kemble's portrayals of De Monfort, and argues that Kean, though less dignified and technically adept than Kemble, brought more sustained energy to the role.
  • Christopher Worth, "'A Very Nice Theatre at Edinr.': Sir Walter Scott and Control of the Theatre Royal," Theatre Research International 17 (1992): 86-95. Examines the historical significance of Scotland's Theatre Royal in relation to Sir Walter Scott's efforts to create a national identity. Discusses The Family Legend as an important early production in the theatre.

Electronic Resources

• Ken A. Bugajski, "Joanna Baillie: An Annotated Bibliography," Romanticism on the Net 12 (Nov. 1998). Provides a bibliography covering Baillie's primary works, reviews, manuscripts, secondary criticism, and electronic resources.
• Guy Wallace White, Joanna Baillie. Offers an essay by White on Baillie (see above), links to electronic texts and other websites which refer to Baillie, and a partial bibliography. Contains a picture of Baillie's monument in Bothwell, Scotland.

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