Williams’ most celebrated work, her eight-volume Letters From France, brings together her belief in the liberating force of commerce that was hinted at in her poetry of the previous decade, and in the possibility of ‘transparent’ social communication that she explored, if finally rejected, in Julia. Written between 1790 and 1796, the letters see these beliefs put to the test, as the ‘liberal’ days of the early revolution, when Williams freely mingles with the crowds celebrating the Fête de la Fédération, turn into the repressive regime of the French Jacobins.

In 1789, when the French National Assembly began to overturn the power of the ancien régime by adopting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and accepting the principles of religious freedom and less aristocratic authority, Helen Maria Williams was living at the heart of London's dissenting community. This group was alive to the changes in France, changes that they sought for their own country. It was a private invitation from her friends, the du Fossés, that took Williams, along with her mother and sister, to France in July 1790, and this private visit was to be the germ of her public narrative of the French revolution.

The first volume, which is the main focus of my discussion here, was favourably received, though most reviews focused on the style of the Letters over the content, and nearly all made special pleading forWilliams’ youth and femininity in terms that diminish any political significance the texts could have. The Analytical Review notes that she demonstrates ‘the talent of chatting on paper’ that women have long possessed. The style of the letters is ‘unaffected’ and with ‘an air of sincerity’, ‘sprightly and entertaining’. Williams is characterized as a ‘lively and agreeable companion’, and an ‘amiable letter-writer’, comments that seem to build on her image as a London socialite. Even the most positive reviews, however, dismiss her enthusiasm for the revolution as ‘the childish admiration of a confined mind’ rather than ‘the prudent and philosophical opinion of a writer, who certainly aims at instructing, as well as entertaining’. For the General Magazine, the problem with the Letters lies in Williams’ attempt to ‘charm the multitude’, that is, to be popular rather than to aim for a more exclusive ‘philosophical’ readership.