Engraving by Henry Robinson after John James Masquerier, 1876-77, courtesy The Walter Scott Digital Archive, Edinburgh University Library. There is a tension between Joanna Baillie’s image as a reserved, gentle and devout Scottish woman and the representation of explosive, at times violent, passions in her poetry and plays. In a letter of April 2, 1817, Byron wrote, “When Voltaire was asked why no woman has ever written even a tolerable tragedy? ‘Ah (said the Patriarch) the composition of a tragedy requires testicles’ If this be true Lord knows what Joanna Baillie does – I suppose she borrows them”. The curiosity of Baillie biographers and critics has been constantly piqued by the question of where this unmarried, seemingly sheltered, Presbyterian minister’s daughter found the material with which to depict obsessive, paranoid, and...
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Citation: Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. "Joanna Baillie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 November 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=219, accessed 05 December 2025.]
