Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams (17 June 1759 – 15 December 1827) 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 and 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.

She was born on 17 June 1759 in London to a Scottish mother, Helen Hay, and a Welsh army officer father, Charles Williams. She had an older sister, Cecilia (baptized 1760), and an older half-sister, Persis from her father's first marriage (born 1743). Her father died in December 1762 when she was two. He had previously served as Secretary for Minorca when it was a British possession, and accumulated enough personal property that his widow and daughters lived comfortably on the income from his estate and pension. They moved to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Williams later described herself as coming from a "family of women", growing up with only her mother and sisters. Williams described her upbringing in the preface to a 1786 book of poems as "a confined education."