Author: Williams, Helen Maria
Biography:
WILLIAMS, Helen Maria (1759-1827: ODNB)
She was born at London to Charles Williams, secretary of the island of Minorca, and his second wife, Helen Hay. She had one younger sister. After Charles Williams’s death in 1762, the family lived in Berwick on Tweed until 1781 when they returned to London. There, their minister, Dr. Andrew Keppis, encouraged Williams to write, and she began publishing verse in 1782. She met and corresponded with other writers and she was admired as a poet of sensibility. She published verse against the slave trade and a novel, Julia (1790; included in the database), but it was the French revolution that gave her the great theme of her work. She first travelled to France in 1790 and settled there in 1794 when her sister married a Frenchman. Because England was at war with France, this involved her and other members of her family in periods of imprisonment and exile. Her 8-volume Letters from France (1790-6) interpreted events there for a British audience and charted her developing anxiety about the growth of violence leading to the Reign of Terror. She also published Tour in Switzerland (1798) following her experience of exile there, and Sketches of the French Republic (1801) celebrating the rise of Napoleon (she subsequently became disillusioned with him). In later life she published translations, including of the works of Alexander Von Humboldt with whom she corresponded, and her Narrative of the Hundred Days appeared in 1815. She became a French citizen in 1817 but in 1823 she moved to Amsterdam to live with a nephew. In 1827 she returned to Paris where she died at home. She was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. (ODNB 1 Jan. 2021)
Other Names:
- H. M. Williams
- Helena-Maria Williams
- Miss Williams