BIOGRAPHY

Fruchtman, Jack, Jr. Introduction to An Eye-Witness Account of the French Revolution by Helen Maria Williams: Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France, pp. 1-30. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.

Provides an overview of Williams's life and career.

CRITICISM

Blakemore, Steven. “Revolution and the French Disease: Laetitia Matilda Hawkins's ‘Letters’ to Helen Maria Williams.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 36, no. 3 (summer 1996): 673-92.

Discusses the gendered discourse on the French Revolution involving Williams's Letters from France, which was countered by Hawkins's Letters on the Female Mind.

Ellison, Julie. “Redoubled Feeling: Politics, Sentiment, and the Sublime in Williams and Wollstonecraft.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 20 (1990): 197-215.

Explores the relationship between sentiment and the sublime in fictional writing and political discourse as practiced by Williams and Wollstonecraft.

Jones, Vivien. “Women Writing Revolution: Narratives of History and Sexuality in Wollstonecraft and Williams.” In Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832, edited by Stephen Copley and John Whale, pp. 178-99. London: Routledge, 1992.

Discusses the transgressive historical writings by Williams and Wollstonecraft on the French Revolution—writings that violated the sense of decorum associated with femininity, the expectations of genre, and the issue of national loyalty.

Kennedy, Deborah. “Revolutionary Tales: Helen Maria Williams's Letters from France and William Wordsworth's ‘Vandracour and Julia.’” The Wordsworth Circle 21, no. 3 (summer 1990): 109-14.

Claims that Williams's account of the du Fossé marriage in Letters from France greatly influenced Wordsworth's account of the story in The Prelude.

———. “‘Storms of Sorrow’: The Poetry of Helen Maria Williams.” Man and Nature: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (1991): 77-91.

Discusses the poetry of Williams, claiming her idea of sensibility was not secular and fashionable, but was based on her faith as a Protestant Dissenter.

———. “Spectacle of the Guillotine: Helen Maria Williams and the Reign of Terror.” Philological Quarterly 73, no. 1 (winter 1994): 95-113.

Examines Williams's coverage of the Reign of Terror—a period considered by her contemporaries as unsuitable subject matter for a female author.

Scheffler, Judith. “Romantic Women Writing on Imprisonment and Prison Reform.” The Wordsworth Circle 19, no. 2 (spring 1988): 99-103.

Examines the writings of three women, Elizabeth Fry, Madame Roland, and Helen Maria Williams, who entered prison and wrote about their experiences.

Sha, Richard C. “Expanding the Limits of Feminine Writing: The Prose Sketches of Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) and Helen Maria Williams.” In Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices, edited by Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley, pp. 194-206. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1995.

Explores the way Owenson and Williams employed the sketch genre—considered appropriate for women writers—to challenge the boundaries between public and private spheres and between masculine and feminine writing.

Watson, Nicola J. “Novel Eloisas: Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Narratives in Helen Maria Williams, Wordsworth, and Byron.” The Wordsworth Circle 23, no. 1 (winter 1992): 18-23.

Considers the ways in which Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise was employed by Williams, Wordsworth, and Byron in their writings on the French Revolution.

Additional information on Williams's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 158; and Literature Resource Center.