Joanna Baillie’s 256th Birthday

The prolific yet soft-spoken Scottish writer, born on this day in 1762, was compared to Shakespeare during her lifetime and is often hailed as one of the greatest female poets of all times. Her first poem, “Winter Day,” evoked the natural beauty of her native Scotland. Her cottage outside London was a hub of the literary scene, where she maintained friendly relationships with many of the important British writers of her time, including William Wordsworth, and Lady and Lord Byron.

In the "Introductory Discourse" to her 1798 Plays on the Passions, Baillie set the tone for what would come to be known as English Romanticism. She spent fourteen years working on her ambitious three-part project, a series of comedies and tragedies about love, hatred and jealousy with the stated goal of “unveiling the human mind under the dominion of those strong and fixed passions.” Today’s Doodle depicts some of her best-loved ‘Plays on the Passions’: Ethwald, De Monfort, The Tryal, Basil, and Orra.

First published anonymously, Baillie’s plays were the talk of London as readers tried to guess the author’s identity. Despite her obvious talents, she was reluctant to publish at all—"were it not that my Brother has expressed a strong wish that I should publish a small vol: of poetry,” she wrote in a letter, ”I should have very little pleasure in the thought”— but she was determined that her plays (psychological dramas featuring strong female characters) be performed by actors on stage rather than simply read. “I have wished to leave behind me in the world a few plays,” she wrote in the preface to her 1804 collection ‘Miscellaneous Plays,’ “some of which might have a chance of continuing to be acted even in our canvas theatres and barns.”

Baillie’s literary legacy is rivaled only by her philanthropy. Though born into a well-off Scottish family, her mother saw hard times following her father’s sudden death. A wealthy uncle’s inheritance helped her and her sister purchase the cottage where she lived and worked for most of her life, but she never forgot the less fortunate, donating half of the earnings from her writing to charity. She wrote an essay in support of chimney sweeps, and advocated for women writers as well as other authors who struggled to provide for themselves.

Happy Birthday Joanna Baillie!