In 1824 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine summarized Joanna Baillie's achievement: “the deep tones of Joanna Baillie's genius struck upon the ear with a thrilling sublimity … [She] sought to direct the taste of the nation and the exertions of its authors, to the legitimate objects of poetry; she brought to the task her counsel and her example.” Such praise almost measures up to Baillie's own ambition – although she would have preferred to see “drama” in the place of “poetry.” Baillie's theoretical writing specifically figures theatre as an ideal means to “direct the taste of the nation.” The question of what nation that is, is complicated for Baillie, an expatriate Scot, by the status of Scotland within Great Britain, and Baillie's status within both. If we recognize that for Baillie Great Britain is truly “forged” (to borrow, as others have done, Linda Colley's phrase) we only begin to assess the complexity of her position. Rather than finding Great Britain to be an organic or homogeneous entity, Baillie's historical fictions acknowledge the degree and kind of labor it takes to make England and Scotland into Britain; together with her theatre theory, they assume the task of keeping up that process of making. Tracing the historical and territorial representation of Britain in plays written across her career – Ethwald (1803; her single English historical tragedy), The Family Legend (1810), and The Phantom (1836) – makes plain the degree and kind of work involved.