In the year 1768, Dr Baillie was transferred from the parochial charge of Bothwell to the office of collegiate minister of Hamilton,—­a town situate, like his former parish, on the banks of the Clyde.  He was subsequently elected Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow.  After his death, which took place in 1778, his daughters both continued, along with their widowed mother, to live at Long Calderwood, in the vicinity of Hamilton, until 1784, when they all accepted an invitation to reside with Dr Matthew Baillie, who had entered on his medical career in London, and had become possessor of a house in Great Windmill Street, built by his now deceased uncle, Dr Hunter.

Though evincing no peculiar promptitude in the acquisition of learning, Joanna had, at the very outset of life, exhibited remarkable talent in rhyme-making.  She composed verses before she could read, and, before she could have fancied a theatre, formed dialogues for dramatic representations, which she carried on with her companions.  But she did not early seek distinction as an author.  At the somewhat mature age of twenty-eight, after she had gone to London, she first published, and that anonymously, a volume of miscellaneous poems, which did not excite any particular attention.  In 1798, she published, though anonymously at first, “A Series of Plays:  in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy.”  In a lengthened preliminary dissertation, she discoursed regarding the drama in all its relations, maintaining the ascendency of simple nature over every species of adornment and decoration.  “Let one simple trait of the human heart, one expression of passion, genuine and true to nature,” she wrote, “be introduced, and it will stand forth alone in the boldness of reality, whilst the false and unnatural around it fades away upon every side, like the rising exhalations of the morning.”  The reception of these plays was sufficient to satisfy the utmost ambition of the author, and established the foundation of her fame.  “Nothing to compare with them had been produced since the great days of the English drama; and the truth, vigour, variety, and dignity of the dramatic portraits, in which they abound, might well justify an enthusiasm which a reader of the present day can scarcely be expected to feel.  This enthusiasm was all the greater, when it became known that these remarkable works, which had been originally published anonymously, were from the pen of a woman still young, who had passed her life in domestic seclusion."[28] Encouraged by the success of the first volume of her dramas on the “Passions,” the author added a second in 1802, and a third in 1812.  During the interval, she published a volume of miscellaneous dramas in 1804, and produced the “Family Legend” in 1810,—­a tragedy, founded upon a Highland tradition.  With a prologue by Sir Walter Scott, and an epilogue by Henry Mackenzie, the “Family