Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Lucy Aikin were neighbours and close friends and Sir Walter Scott was a regular correspondent with whom Joanna Baillie stayed in Scotland and who visited her whenever he was in London. Volume 1 consisted of Count Basil a tragedy on love The Tryal a comedy on love and De Monfort a tragedy on hatred. Her intellectual and artistic faculties were here stimulated and Joanna Baillie displayed a talent for drawing considerable musical ability and a love of mathematics.

Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition Joanna Baillie hosted a brilliant literary society in her cottage at Hampstead. Baillie died at the age of 88 her faculties remaining unimpaired to the last. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and though a woman intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage.