“There is, perhaps, no employment which the human mind will with so much…” — Joanna Baillie | V2Melody

“There is, perhaps, no employment which the human mind will with so much avidity pursue, as the discovery of concealed passion, as the tracing the varieties and progress of a perturbed soul.”

She names hidden passion as the true subject of tragedy · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

About Joanna Baillie

Joanna Baillie

11 September 1762–23 February 1851

Joanna Baillie was born on 11 September 1762 at the manse of Bothwell, near Hamilton in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and died on 23 February 1851 at Hampstead, then a village on the northern edge of London. During her exceptionally long life, she became one of the most admired British writers of the Romantic period: a poet…

More by Joanna Baillie

Poems by Joanna Baillie

More remarks by Joanna Baillie

“I have endeavoured to set in array, for the use of common readers, all the texts of the New Testament bearing upon a certain point of faith, leaving every one to judge for himself from the general tenor of the whole.”

A laywoman's insistence that belief should rest on scripture, not party · Letter defending A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament

“Formed as we are with these sympathetick propensities in regard to our own species, it is not at all wonderful that theatrical exhibition has become the grand and favourite amusement of every nation into which it has been introduced.”

Theatre exists, she says, because we cannot help watching one another · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“I have to thank it, for that kind of reception which is best calculated to make a work go on well—praise mixed with a considerable portion of censure.”

She valued mixed criticism as healthier than unmixed praise · To the Reader, Plays on the Passions, volume two, 1802