SOURCE: Feldman, Paula R. “Helen Maria Williams (1761?-1827).” In British Women Poets of the Romantic Era, pp. 797-803. Baltimore, M.D.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Feldman discusses Williams's published writings and their reception by her contemporaries.

Helen Maria Williams, best known for her eyewitness chronicles of the French Revolution and her influential salon in Paris, was also a poet who could not resist weaving verse into her novels and even into her translation of another author's work. She received her education from her Scots mother, Helen Hay. Her father, Charles Williams, a Welsh army officer, died when she was still a child, and her mother took her and her younger sister, Cecilia, to live in Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the border with Scotland. In 1781 Helen went to London. Andrew Kippis, a leading dissenting minister and family friend, became her mentor and introduced her to Elizabeth...