Helen Maria Williams

Who was Helen Maria Williams?

Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. A religious dissenter, she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France.

A controversial figure in her own time, the young Williams was favourably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth, but she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton.