Biography
Early Life:
Helen Maria Williams was born June 17, 1759, in London. Her father died when she was just three years old, and she was raised and educated by her mother with her two sisters in Berwick. In 1781 her family moved back to London where her life as a writer really began. While there she made friends with Elizabeth Montagu, joining the bluestockings for their meetings. On top of that her family’s minister Dr. Andrew Kippis took an interest in her writing and encouraged her talent. He was a key figure in her writing career, and also introduced her to many other important people in her time. Likely because of Kippis, in 1782 she published her first poem, Edwin and Eltruda. This was very shortly followed by a number of other pieces, and Williams very quickly left her mark in the writing world, getting praise and attention from other well-known writers of the time, and even inspiring the poem, “Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress” (1787) by William Wordsworth, his first published work (Orlando).
One of her most important pieces from her early career was her work Poems (1786) which was very successful upon release and solidified her as a prominent writer and important figure in literary circles. In this collection Williams made clear her stance on many political topics, and the work touched on a multitude of different things, such as her stance against war, most huge political topics of the time, especially the French revolution, and her own religious beliefs. With that being said, during her lifetime Helen Maria Williams was more than just a writer, and could be considered an activist of her time, making her somewhat controversial being solidly on the radical side of the political divide in England between the radicals and conservatives caused in large by the French Revolution going on at the time. She wrote in support of abolition of slavery in the late 1780s publishing “Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade” in 1788, and stayed very much committed to the cause throughout her life. She also wrote in opposition to war among other politically charged topics, such as opposing the Tests and Corporations Act, which she accompanied in dissenting with other popular writers of the time, such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Samuel Rogers, and William Godwin.
Helen Maria Williams and France:
A large part of Williams' life and career was spent writing about and addressing the French Revolution. In 1789 when the Bastille fell, she wrote a poem about it in her novel Julia (1790). She became very entangled within the French politics of the time, and was a supporter of the Revolutionaries. She went to France for the first time in the summer of 1790, and wrote a book called Letters Written in France (1790) (later expanded to include eight volumes, and retitled Letters from France) in which she talked all about everything she saw while in France, from her what she saw of the French Revolution, the atmosphere, how she felt while visiting, to all the stops she made and little things she saw. She even went to the anniversary celebration of the fall of the Bastille and recounted her feelings while there with the celebrating locals.
After returning to England from her first visit to France, Helen Maria Williams was enchanted, and it did not take her all that long after that visit to set off to live in France for two years, wishing her loyal readers a farewell in her poem A Farewell for Two Years to England (1791), before departing in September of 1791. She did briefly visit London in 1792, publishing her second volume of Letters from France while there, and trying to convince her family to come back with her to France, likely unaware just how dangerous things were becoming while she was doing so, as the Reign of Terror approached.
Reign of Terror and Switzerland:
When she returned to France from London she found herself dismayed with just how violent everything had become, and thus allied herself with the Girondists, the more tame group of dissenters during the French Revolution, and made up of members who tended to agree with the Revolution itself, but not the route it had began to take in the later stages. Williams hosted many members of this group during her time with them. She wrote about the violent state of affairs in France during this time, trying to spread word to the English, criticizing the direction the movement had taken, and had to publish this volume of Letters from France (1793) anonymously as result.
In 1793, after the Girondists fell to the Montagnards and the Reign of Terror rose, Williams and her family, whom she had managed to convince to join her in France, were arrested for their part in aiding the group. They stayed in a Luxembourg prison for six weeks, with Williams working on translating French literature and poetry to English the entire time. While in prison she even translated one of the most popular English translations of Paul et Virginie by Bernardin St Pierre. Prison was a dangerous place for anyone during the Reign of Terror due to the unpredictability of who was going to be killed. In her stay there Helen Maria Williams did have to fear being guillotined, as many of her Girondist friends were at the time, and it was only after a month where she and her family were transferred was it safe to assume she wasn’t going to be killed.
When she and her family were released from prison she and her family went to Switzerland, unable to safely remain in France. She travelled with John Hurford Stone, and Benjamin Vaughan, an act she was criticized for as Stone was still legally a married man, despite being separated from his wife. Though nothing about the state of their relationship had ever been confirmed, Williams remained unmarried, and many people assume Stone to be something of her life partner. He remained close to her and her family for many years, even living with her for many years and entering in business with her brother-in-law.
Williams remained in Switzerland for about six months, living under the protection of Colonel Johann-Rudolph Frey, where she wrote few poems. After this period of time she went back to France and wrote another volume of Letters from France, (1795-6) detailing the Reign of Terror and its aftermath.
In 1798 Williams released Tour in Switzerland, which was of the new political climate of the time, predicting possible political movements that may occur in Switzerland along with detailing her travels in the country. This book also included the popular poem “Hymn Written Amongst the Alps”. Along with this, Williams’ sister Cecilia also died in 1798, leaving her with custody of her nephews, Athanase and Charles.
The nineteenth century:
Helen Maria Williams entered the nineteenth century with hope for the future, and in her book Sketches of the French Republic (1801) she showed hope even excitement for Napoleon’s reign, while also staying true to her values from the beginning of the revolution, supporting many of the ideals it started out with. It did not take very long for Williams to become disenchanted with Napoleon and his policies however, and he very much was not fond of her, finding both her lack of praise of his rule, and later her private criticism of him to be infuriating. Placing her salon under surveillance, declaring her ode The Peace signed between the French and the English (or Ode to the Peace of Amiens) to be treasonous, Napoleon had her arrested for a day for writing it. The political climate within France under Napoleonic rule was such that she could no longer publish for a period of time and she became more concerned with the raising of her nephews.
In 1810 she began a lifelong friendship with German scientist Alexander von Humboldt after translating some of his work to English, and in 1814 after Napoleon abdicated she found herself writing and publishing yet again, and she legally became an official French citizen in 1817.
Late life:
Her last years weren’t all good however. She suffered many losses, from her mother, to her half-sister Persis, and her friend John Stone, it was a difficult time for her. Yet even with all this hardship in her life, Williams stayed up to date in the politics of the time, and before she died she published one last book called Poems on Various Subjects (1823). Her nephews took care of her as grew older in years, and she even moved in with her oldest nephew in Amsterdam from 1823-1827, though she moved back to Paris for a short while before she died.
A couple months before her passing she got a copy of her memoirs, Souvenirs de la révolution francais published in French by her nephew Charles in May 1827. She passed away on December 15th of that year, and was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery near both her mother and John Stone.
Work Cited:
Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. “Helen Maria Williams entry: Life screen” within Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Online, 2006. http://orlando.cambridge.org/
Kennedy, Deborah. “Williams, Helen Maria.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 4, 2010. Williams, Helen Maria (1759–1827), writer | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (oxforddnb.com)
“Helen Maria Williams.” Wikipedia. Helen Maria Williams - Wikipedia
