Helen Maria Williams contributed to reform writing as the most important eyewitness commentator on the French Revolution for British readers. In a series of books published during the 1790s, the Napoleonic regime, and the Romantic era, she gave an impassioned and largely sympathetic representation of the Revolution, influencing a generation of polemicists, poets, and other writers.

Helen Maria Williams was born in London on 17 June 1761, the daughter of a Welsh father, Charles Williams, and a Scottish mother, Helen Hay Williams. She had an older sister, Cecilia. Her father was an army officer, and on his death in 1769 the family moved to Berwick, on the border of Scotland. In the early 1780s Williams returned to London, possibly to further her literary and social career, for she took with her a poem, published as Edwin and Eltruda: A Legendary Tale (1782). With its success she acquired an extensive and diverse intellectual...