Joanna Baillie
(1762–1851)

Intensely psychological, delving into extreme passions from murderous hate to tragic love, Joanna Baillie's first dramatic work, A Series of Plays on the Passions (1798), thrilled lay readers and writers alike. The fact that the works had been published anonymously only heightened their mystery. At the time, no one knew that these forceful works had been the brainchild of a soft-spoken young woman from Scotland.

Baillie came from a family of intellectuals. Her father was a university professor and her uncles and brother were medical pioneers and physicians to the royal family. Since she grew up in an atmosphere where thought was encouraged, she studied geometry, philosophy, and Latin at a time when more than half the population of British women was illiterate. Baillie continued the family's intellectual tradition as an adult by hosting a salon—a meeting place where writers, doctors, and social critics met to discuss ideas.

Baillie's diverse literary output included plays, poems, essays on literary theory, song lyrics, and theological treatises. Her plays stress the importance of imagination and often dwell on darker themes such as intrigue, madness, and disease. The psychological nature of her work influenced the English Romantic writers, and she counted Lord Byron, Williams Wordsworth, and Sir Walter Scott among her friends and admirers. In addition to her literary achievements, Baillie energetically lobbied for anti-slavery legislation, fought for new copyright laws, and sponsored the work of other promising writers.

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