Excerpt from The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie: Complete in One Volume The life of Joanna Baillie contained un usually few incidents of an exciting or eventful nature. She lived in retirement from the first hour to the last. She was nu married, and her sole constant companion was a sister likewise unmarried. The only circumstances which distinguished one day from another, apart from her literary career, were domestic matters or changes of locality, and these were few. She was connected with celebrity solely by a genius, which shed light on contemporary time, and far into the future. The quietude, however, of her existence renders more extraordinary the nature of its result. From her serene seclusion she sur veyed the wide and restless expanse of the human soul, she penetrated to its deepest and darkest recesses, was present to situa tions and emotions remote as possible from her own; and embodied a vast variety of con ceptions in creations co-existent thenceforth with the language of this country. The most prominent events of her life, traits illustrative of her character, of the dawn and develop ment of her genius, with the more important circumstances of her literary career, can alone interest the public mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.