Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
One of the key literary figures of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Joanna Baillie’s poetry and drama has been widely anthologized. She was born in Bothwell, Lanarkshire. Her family history is linked to William Wallace, whose story Baillie recounts in her Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (1821) beside Columbus and Lady Grisell Baillie.
Despite their brevity, her connections with Glasgow are important. In a letter to her nephew William, Baillie reminisces about her earliest memories: “running in the garden and looking at the flowers… and above all an occasional walk to the Clyde with my Sister, when our Nurse-maid put us both into the water to be douket and dance & [sic] splash about as we pleased.” Although she had yet to move to Glasgow, Baillie’s memoirs underline the importance of the Clyde in literary geography, calling Smollett’s ‘Leven Water’ to mind.
At ten years-old she was sent to a boarding school in Glasgow, a move which Baillie claimed had a positive effect on her imagination. She spent a further six years in Glasgow, during which time she found her passion for theatre. Her family moved from Glasgow in 1778 following the death of her father James Baillie, the Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University. Her mother was supported financially by her brother William Hunter, the Lanarkshire-born Enlightenment figure who also inspired the career of Joanna’s brother, Matthew Baillie (1761-1723).
Baillie also lived in Colchester and Hampstead. The greater bulk of her literary life was spent in England, where she was greatly admired by Byron, Wordsworth, Hemans, Southey, Coleridge, and Sir Walter Scott. Among her many famous friends was the Glasgow poet Thomas Campbell, who wrote a poem for Baillie’s A Collection of Poems (1823).