Helen Maria Williams, born in London, was raised by her mother in Berwick-on-Tweed. In 1782 she returned to London to publish Edwin and Eltruda, making literary acquaintances through Elizabeth Montagu's salon. She traveled to France in 1790, where for many years she chronicled the French Revolution in letters published in England. Her republican views alienated many former admirers, and Williams, who pursued a career as a woman of letters in Paris, Switzerland, and Amsterdam, never returned.
TEXT RECORDS:
PUBLICATIONS:
Edwin and Eltruda. A legendary tale. 1782.
An ode on the peace. 1783.
Peru, a poem. In six cantos. 1784.
Poems. 2 vols, 1786.
A poem on the bill lately passed for regulating the slave trade. 1788.
A farewell, for two years, to England. A poem. 1791.
Letters on the French Revolution, written in France, in the summer of 1790. 1791.
Letters from France: containing many new anecdotes relative to the French Revolution. 1792.
Letters containing a sketch of the politics of France. 1795.
A tour in Switzerland. 2 vols, 1798.
Sketches of the state of manners and opinions in the French Republic in a series of letters. 3 vols, 1801.
The history of Perourou [trans. Williams]. 1801.
The political and confidential correspondence of Lewis the sixteenth. 3 vols, 1803.
Verses addressed to two nephews. 1809.
Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the new continent [Humbold, trans. Williams]. 7 vols, 1814-29.
Researches concerning the institutions and moments of the ancient inhabitants of America [Humbold, trans. Williams]. 2 vols, 1814.
A narrative of the events in France from March 1815. 1815.
On the late persecution of the Protestants in the south of France. 1816.
The leper of the city of Aoste [J. de Maistre, trans. Williams]. 1817.
The charter; lines addressed to her nephew. 1819.
Letters on the events in France since the restoration in 1815. 1819.
Poems on various subjects. 1823.
Souvenirs de la revolution francaise. 1827.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Dissenter
privately educated
woman writer
poet
novelist
translator
The Morning Chronicle
Lady's Monthly Museum
Robert Burns
Samuel Rogers
Anna Seward
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
Catalogue of five hundred Celebrated Authors (1788); James Boswell, in Life of Johnson (1791) ed. G. B. Hill (1791); David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); "Miss Helen Maria Williams" Ladies' Monthly Museum S3 3 (January 1816) 1-5 [portrait]; "Original Letters of Robert Burns and Miss Williams" New Monthly Magazine 10 (October 1818) 227-29; Alexander Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses (1827); obituary in Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature NS 2 (February 1828) 136-37; obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 98 (April, May 1828) 373, 386; Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record (1855); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature 3rd ed. (1876); J. E. Alger, in Englishmen in the French Revolution (1889); Frederic Rowton, Female Poets of Great Britain (1853); Todd, Dictionary of Women Writers (1987); Lonsdale, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (1989); Deborah Kennedy, Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution (2002).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Helen Maria Williams:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
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AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
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