Author

Joanna Baillie(1762–1851)

Joanna Baillie is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, and manuscripts (1820–1847). 4 distinct works are named, most often in Papers on Literature and Art, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement: ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Books · Essays · Manuscripts
Documented: 1820–1847

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Joanna Baillie’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

Dated
1820Work not namedAttested
“I have read naught save Massinger, Miss Baillie and now and then some of Burns-”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. 1820]
Same explicit reading statement names Joanna Baillie.

In Fuller’s words

“And who, that reads Joanna Baillie's address to Mrs. Siddons, but feels that the fate, which placed his birth in another age from her, has robbed him of full sense of a kind of greatness whose absence none other can entirely supply. The impassioned changes of thy beauteous face, / Thy arms impetuous tost, thy robe's wide flow, / And the dark tempest gathered on thy brow, / What time thy flashing eye and lip of scorn / Down to the dust thy mimic foes have borne [...]”

"To Mrs. Siddons" in Fugitive Verses · Papers on Literature and Art · 1846

When Fuller engaged with Joanna Baillie

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence1record

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York

VI. Europe7records

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Baillie in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1820—

Letter to Amelia Greenwood

read

“I have read naught save Massinger, Miss Baillie and now and then some of Burns”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller names Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) alongside other authors she is currently reading, though she cites no specific work. Baillie's best-known works are De Montfort (vol. 1 of Plays on the Passions, 1798; produced at Drury Lane 1800) and The Family Legend (1810).

1846—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Philip Van Artevelde” · 1845

analyzed · read

“Miss Baillie's plays on the passions hold a middle place. [...] 'Tis great pity that the authoress of De Montfort and Basil should not have attempted a narrative poem.”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p135

1846—

Papers on Literature and Art

p109

excerpted · analyzed · quoted · read2 selected passages

“And who, that reads Joanna Baillie's address to Mrs.”

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Joanna Baillie and quotes from her address poem to Mrs. Siddons (the great tragic actress Sarah Siddons, 1755–1831). The title is inferred because Fuller refers to it as 'address to Mrs. Siddons' rather than naming the collection; the specific poem is identified by the quoted verses.

The title is inferred because Fuller refers to it as 'address to Mrs. Siddons' rather than naming the collection; the specific poem is identified by the quoted verses.

“Such are Festus, Paracelsus, Coleridge's Remorse, Shelley's Cenci; Miss Baillie's plays, though meant for action, and with studied attempts to vary them by the lighter shades of common nature [...] and Byron's are of the same class”

Fuller names only 'Miss Baillie's plays' generically, so the title is the identified standard collection.

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.

1846—

The Modern Drama

“The Modern Drama”

analyzed2 selected passages

“Perhaps the effect produced by Mrs. Siddons is still more vividly shown in the character of Jane de Montfort, which seems modelled from her.”

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p121; page given is to the 1869 reprint.

“His characters, like Miss Baillie's or Talfourd's, narrate rather than express their life.”

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p145; page given is to the 1869 reprint.

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.

1847—

Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . VIII.

“Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . VIII.”

analyzed · read2 selected passages

“I prize Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland as the best specimens which have been hitherto offered of women of a Spartan, Roman strength and singleness of mind”

“The Plays on the Passions are faulty in their plan—all attempts at comic, even at truly dramatic effect, fail—but there are masterly sketches of character”

Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . VIII." New-York Daily Tribune, 2 February 1847.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

Early Reading Notes on Ballads

analyzedManuscript page

“Lady Wardlaw and Miss Baillie _ the / only authoresses I ever wished to know _ I dont / believe they were spoiled by writing _”

Fuller, Margaret. "Early Reading Notes on Ballads." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Inferred Fuller names 'Miss Baillie' but cites no specific work; title inferred as her body of work (poems and plays) which Fuller admires.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.

1840—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p183

analyzed · read

“I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie.”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.

Inferred Margaret Fuller's account of visiting Joanna Baillie in Hampstead reveals a thoughtful engagement with Baillie's poetry, particularly with a work that tenderly depicted the author's sister, Agnes.

Fuller discerns in the poem a "happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos," and judges it to possess "absolute truth of outline." While the specific poem remains unidentified, Fuller's insightful commentary suggests she was familiar with Baillie's later collections, such as Fugitive Verses (1840) or Metrical Legends (1821), which often explored themes of familial affection.