Anna Williams

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Standard Name: Williams, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Williams
AW was an eighteenth-century translator and poet. Best-known among her slender oeuvre is a miscellany or anthology of contemporary poems. Her projected dictionary of scientific terms remained unwritten.
Photograph of a painting of Anna Williams by Frances Reynolds. Williams gazes slightly to the right, away from the viewer. She wears a white cap, with little hair visible, a white bodice, and black mantle or cape. Her pale face makes a strong contrast with the painting's dark background. The picture hangs in Williams's long-term home, Dr Johnson's House in Gough Square, London.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP wrote a poem, Three Warnings, which was printed four months later in Anna Williams 's Miscellanies.
This has no connection with her 1798 pamphlet Three Warnings to John Bull.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press, 1987.
61
Friends, Associates Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
LMH 's friends included Margaret Mitchell , Frances Reynolds , Cornelia Knight , Anna Williams (from whom she received particular kindness), and Sir Joshua Reynolds .
Feminist Companion Archive.
Sarah Harriet Burney wrote of her: A more fluent...
Friends, Associates Samuel Johnson
Johnson had a talent for friendship which he kept well exercised: the names mentioned here represent only a selection of his friendships. His early London friends, whom he met during a comparatively poorly documented period...
Occupation Frances Reynolds
Samuel Johnson was eager to sit for her, and did so on three occasions: in March 1775, in June 1780, and in summer 1783. He may have been sitting for her on the day before...
Publishing Mary Masters
This volume was printed for the Author. Its 833 subscribers (for 903 copies)
qtd. in
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 409-10
included Samuel Johnson , Mrs Gardiner of Snow-Hill, Thomas Birch , a John Cockburne who may well have...
Textual Features Frances Reynolds
FR pays particular attention to his relations with women, individually and in general: Johnson set a higher value upon female friendship than, perhaps, most men.
Reynolds, Frances. “Recollections of Dr. Johnson”. Johnsonian Miscellanies, edited by George Birkbeck Hill and George Birkbeck Hill, Clarendon Press, 1897, pp. 2: 250 - 300.
2: 252
She remarks on the paternal affection he entertained...
Textual Production Elizabeth Carter
She occupies volume two in Pickering and Chatto 's series Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738-1790, 1999, general editor Gary Kelly . This volume includes her Epictetus, her two Rambler essays...
Textual Production Samuel Johnson
SJ contributed a fairy story or philosophical tale entitled The Fountains to Anna Williams 's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1766. Williams had been gathering this collection for years with Johnson's help.
Textual Production Mary Masters
Not included in her collection, though it is a form of letter, was a petition to Samuel Richardson , written and signed by MM and Anna Williams in 1753 (probably before August) for delivery by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Samuel Beckett
As it stands it focusses less on Thrale than on Anna Williams and the other women actually resident in Johnson 's household.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Scott
MS brings her list up to date with significant women writers who have published since the appearance of The Feminead. Her information is not perfect—she credits Anna Williams with some works actually written by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
This work extends and deepens the pictures given in her first book of reminiscences both of Johnson and his circle and of other people including women writers. LMH expresses admiration for Hester Piozzi 's letter...
Wealth and Poverty Elizabeth Montagu
By her marriage EM acquired wealth and improved her social standing. Edward Montagu was a grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich (admiral and patron of Samuel Pepys ). He owned mines in the rapidly-developing...

Timeline

8 July 1714: Queen Anne signed the royal consent to the...

Building item

8 July 1714

Queen Anne signed the royal consent to the Longitude Act, whereby Parliament offered a reward of up to £20,000 for a foolproof method of calculating longitude at sea.
Williams, J. E. D. From Sails to Satellites: The Origin and Development of Navigational Science. Oxford University Press, 1992.
80
Quill, Humphrey. John Harrison: The Man Who Found Longitude. Baker, 1966.
4, 7

Texts

Williams, Anna, editor. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. T. Davies, 1766.
La Bléterie, Jean Philippe de. The Life of the Emperor Julian. Translator Williams, Anna, M. Cooper, 1746.