Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams ( * 1762, † 1827) was a British novelist, poet and translator of French works.

Life

Helen Maria Williams was born in London and was (probably ) born in 1762. Her parents were of Welsh army officer Charles Williams and originally from Scotland, Helen Hay. After the early death of his father the family moved to Berwick -upon- Tweed, where Helen was taught by her mother. From 1781 Williams lived in London, where her late mother and sister followed. In London she met the poet Andrew Kippis know, who introduced her with the leading intellectuals of the time.

Through the help Kippis 1782 Helen was able to publish her ​​first poem, the romance Edwin and Eltruda, A Legendary Tale. In the following years appeared Ode on the Peace ( 1783) and Peru ( 1784), a historical poem about the threat posed by Europe exploitation of South America. Williams' two-volume Collected Poems from 1786 found a significant paragraph. A year later, she released another poem by explosive issue with the poem on the Slave Bill. Its stance on slavery issue influenced, inter alia, the works of Hannah More and Ann Yearsley.

Helen Maria was moving towards the end of the century primarily in politically active, radical circles and was regarded as an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. In her Letters Written in France in the Summer of 1790, inter alia, describes the annual celebration of the storming of the Bastille. Of 1791 /92 she lived exclusively on French soil. William Wordsworth, who still shared the enthusiasm for the revolution at that time, sought a meeting with the poet, which, however, did not materialize.

In the nineties, Williams brought out mainly prose, in particular further volumes of the Letters from France. In the fine imposed by Robespierre in prison (1793) her translation of St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie work (1796 ) was born. After her release, she was living with the divorced John Hurford Jones. The experiences during a six -month stay in Switzerland ( 1794) describes her two-volume tour in Switzerland "by 1798.

Many of her English friends turned away from Helen Maria, not least because they mittrug the "wild anarchy " in France ( as judged Boswell, who mentioned in his Life of Johnson). Williams published more prose works, later, her Poems on Various Subjects (1823 ).

She lived for several years in Amsterdam and died 1827 in Paris.

Works

• Edwin and Eltruda. A legendary tale ( 1782 )
• Ode on the Peace ( 1783)
• Peru ( 1784), a poem in six Cantos
• The Bastille. A Vision (1790)
• Julia (1790), a novel