Further Letters of Joanna Baillie

Thomas McLean attends to the media of his work. Readers may be familiar with and already grateful for his online chronology of all the known letters of Baillie.... For filling out this already generous resource, Thomas McLean now provides the richly stimulating archive of Further Letters of Joanna Baillie. * The Wordsworth Circle *
With Further Letters of Joanna Baillie, Thomas McLean provides readers with an even deeper look into Baillie’s life and personality…. McLean has provided not only a valuable resource for scholars of Romanticism but also an entertaining look at this once forgotten Romantic playwright. * Romanticism and Victorianism On The Net *
Out of the two hundred seventy-four letters in McLean's edition, two hundred thirty-seven have never before been published... In extensive footnotes, McLean has impeccably identified and contextualized the recipients of the letters as well as acquaintances named within them.... These newly discovered letters should encourage further scholarship on Baillie, and I also hope they inspire curiosity about her missing pre-1800 correspondence. * Review 19 *
McLean’s book provides an important addition to the burgeoning scholarship on Baillie, and his introduction helpfully suggests the insights he believes this new edition of letters gives into her relationships with contemporaries. McLean points to “the confidence” that emerges from Baillie’s letters that her work “would remain valued and valuable after her death “ (21), and there is enough epistolary evidence to counter, as McLean states, the critical tendency throughout the years to paint Baillie “as frustrated and even defeated by the London publishing world and theater establishment” (23). And indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of this collection is the way in which the letters open a wider window on Baillie’struggle with personal ambition and fulfillment of her creative desires. * Studies In Romanticism *
With Further Letters of Joanna Baillie, Thomas McLean provides readers with a deeper look into Baillie’s life and personality. The helpful introduction and careful footnotes that McLean provides allow readers to position each of these letters within a specific context. McLean not only provides a good, brief survey of Baillie’s life and career as a playwright but also highlights various ways that scholar’s ideas about Baillie will be enriched by the material found in the letters. He then uses his footnotes effectively to give readers important points of context that allow them to draw these deeper connections. Mclean also does an excellent job providing context for Baillie’s assessment of other writers, emphasizing her active participation in the literary world of the early nineteenth century. By choosing to arrange the letters chronologically, McLean allows readers to follow the progression of Baillie’s life from 1800 until 1851, helping them not only to see the development of her ideas and concerns but also to consider how they might affect the various works that she published throughout her life. He has even taken this project further online so that scholars interested in reading all of her letters in chronological order may reference “A chronological Listing of the Letters of Joanna Baillie” on the Romantic Circles website. This listing includes the correspondents and dates of the letters in this volume as well as the Collected letters, and it will also be periodically updated as more information is discovered. With this volume and with the website, Thomas McLean has provided not only a valuable resource for scholars of Romanticism but also an entertaining look at this once forgotten Romantic playwright * Romanticism and Victorianism On The Net *