Helen Maria Williams

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Standard Name: Williams, Helen Maria
Birth Name: Helen Maria Williams
HMW wrote, during the Romantic or revolutionary period, as a woman with a mission, eager to see change for the better in the political, international world. She was a radical and egalitarian in gender relations too, although she believed that femininity comprised especial sensibility. Despite her two novels (one original and one translated), she is best known for her earlier poetry and her later political commentary on events in France, cast in the form of published letters.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort ascending Excerpt
Literary responses Ann Yearsley
Again one of Yearsley's most perceptive readers was Anna Seward , who wrote to Helen Maria Williams on Christmas Day 1787 that Yearsley and Burns were both miracles . . . . Perhaps she has...
Friends, Associates Mary Wollstonecraft
In Paris MW met several of her radical friends from London, like Tom Paine , as well as Helen Maria Williams and her lover John Hurford Stone . She also met French revolutionaries like Manon Roland
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
The Gentleman's Magazine typified the response of the conservative press. It complained that our modern philosophers . . . try to inspire the poor of this country with jealousy and resentment against the rich, and...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
On her first visit to Paris, she met Germaine de Staël , and formed lasting friendships with the marquise de Villette (Voltaire 's adopted daughter) and with Elizabeth Patterson (an American heiress, the abandoned...
Leisure and Society Mariana Starke
MS and her family were great supporters of literature through the subscription system. She subscribed in 1781 to Anne Francis 's Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon, from the original Hebrew, which was...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Smith
CS met Helen Maria Williams during her brief visit to revolutionary France. She provided an introduction to Williams for William Wordsworth (who had in fact met or perhaps merely seen her already) before he too...
Friends, Associates Anna Seward
AS , visiting London, spent a lot of time with Helen Maria Williams and her lively social circle.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
144
Publishing Anna Seward
The month after Louis XVI was guillotined, AS expressed her outrage at the developing Terror in France with an impassioned letter printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, urging her friend Helen Maria Williams to come home.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
200-1
Friends, Associates Mary Scott
MS was probably a friend from an early age of the dissenting hymn-writer Anne Steele , who lived not very far away and who was a generation older. They spent much time together in 1773...
Travel Anne Plumptre
AP set out for France to visit Helen Maria Williams ; she stayed in France for nearly three years.
Plumptre, Anne. “Introduction”. Something New, edited by Deborah McLeod, Broadview, p. vii - xxix.
xxvii, x
Friends, Associates Anne Plumptre
Their friends included Eliza Fenwick , Helen Maria Williams , Susannah Taylor , Mary Hays , Amelia Opie , Thomas Holcroft , John Thelwall , and other radicals. AP supported Thelwall's local electioneering, and Ann Jebb
Textual Production Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP was working on some literary, political, and philosophical dialogues to be called Una and Duessa, which were designed to counter the writings of Helen Maria Williams .
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
359-60
Textual Features Mrs F. C. Patrick
In the course of a busy plot Augusta is abducted, but saves herself from a forced marriage (her mother, the instigator of this outrage, affects to think her married in the sight of Heaven) by...
Travel Amelia Opie
They travelled with Anne Plumptre and stayed with Helen Maria Williams . They went as far as Naples.
Friends, Associates Amelia Opie
She had already begun to move in fashionable circles, and became friendly with Lady Caroline Lamb , Lady Cork , and painters James Northcote and Sir Joshua Reynolds .
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. Adeline Mowbray, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, p. i - xxix.
xxxvii
In 1802, in London and...

Timeline

1788: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre published his popular...

Writing climate item

1788

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre published his popular sentimentalnovelPaul et Virginie, a two-generation story involving friendship between two single mothers living in a kind of exile in the idyllic, colonial, tropical Ile de France (now...

April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...

Women writers item

April 1789

The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.

Late 1790: William Holland published a print of Burke...

National or international item

Late 1790

William Holland published a print of Burke running the gauntlet of enemies with whips: women as well as men.

June 1793: An enterprising printer and freemason, John...

Writing climate item

June 1793

An enterprising printer and freemason, John Wharlton Bunney , put out the first number of The Free-Mason's Magazine, or General and Complete Library.

13 July 1793: Charlotte Corday, a Royalist from Normandy,...

National or international item

13 July 1793

Charlotte Corday , a Royalist from Normandy, assassinated Marat as he lay in his bath.

Texts

Williams, Helen Maria. A Farewell, for Two Years, to England. T. Cadell, 1791.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Narrative of the Events which have taken place in France. J. Murray, 1815.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade. T. Cadell, 1788, http://BL.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795. Research Publications, 1975.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794, and 1795. Editor Gifford, John, T. N. Longman, 1797.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Tour in Switzerland. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1798, http://BLC.
Williams, Helen Maria. An Ode on the Peace. T. Cadell, 1783.
Williams, Helen Maria. Edwin and Eltruda, A Legendary Tale. T. Cadell, 1782.
Bending, Stephen et al. “General Introduction”. Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland, vol. 1 (1798), edited by Stephen Bending et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p. ix - xxi.
Williams, Helen Maria. “Introduction”. Julia, edited by Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette, Pickering and Chatto, 2010, p. xi - xxix.
Williams, Helen Maria. “Introduction and Chronology”. Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790, edited by Neil Fraistat and Susan Sniader Lanser, Broadview, 2001, pp. 9-52.
Williams, Helen Maria. Julia. T. Cadell, 1790.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters from France Containing Many New Anecdotes. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1792.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters from France, Containing a Great Variety of Interesting and Original Information. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1793.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters on the Events which have passed in France since the Restoration in 1815. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1819.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790, to a Friend in England. T. Cadell, 1790.
Williams, Helen Maria. On the Late Persecution of the Protestants in the South of France. T. and G. Underwood, 1816.
Saint Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin de. Paul and Virginia. Translator Williams, Helen Maria, G. G. and J. Robinson, 1795.
Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von, and Aimé Bonpland. Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799-1804. Translator Williams, Helen Maria, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1821.
Williams, Helen Maria. Peru. T. Cadell, 1784, http://U of A Special Collections.
Williams, Helen Maria. Poems. Printed by A. Rivington and J. Marshall for T. Cadell, 1786.
Williams, Helen Maria. Poems on Various Subjects. G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.
Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von. Researches, Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America. Translators Williams, Helen Maria and Aimé Bonpland, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, J. Murray and H. Colburn, 1814.
Williams, Helen Maria. Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1801.