Poems, &c. Wherein it is Attempted to Describe Certain Views of Nature and of Rustic Manners; and Also, to Point Out, in Some Instances, the Different ... Produce on Different Characters

by Joanna Baillie

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Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1790

About the author

Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist who was well known during her lifetime. She was educated at Miss MacDonald's Boarding School in Glasgow and it was in Glasgow that she began to write plays and poems.

Baillie was admired for her literary powers and hosted a brilliant literary society in her cottage at Hampstead. Her intelligence and integrity were allied to a modest demeanour which made her, for many, the epitome of a Christian gentlewoman.

She was shrewd, observant of human nature, and persistent to the point of obstinacy in developing her own views and opinions. Her brand of drama remained essentially unchanged throughout her life, and she took pride in having carried out her major work, the Plays on the Passions, more or less in the form she had originally conceived. Her inventive faculties were remarked upon by "practically everybody whose opinion on a literary matter was worth anything" (Carswell 275), and she was on friendly terms with all the leading women writers of her time.