Letters written in France,

London: T. Cadell; G. G. and J. Robinson;, 1791-93. A contemporary female account of the French Revolution The first four volumes in Williams's celebrated eight-volume eyewitness account of the French Revolution, all first editions except volume I, which is the second edition, published the year after the first. This popular epistolary series gained the author the appellation of "English historian of the French Revolution". Published in separate volumes over the course of six years and known collectively as "Letters from France" (1790-96), Williams's correspondence offers a detailed report and analysis of the Revolution, as well as of its development and aftermath. The author "encases the political within the personal, sharing her feelings with her readers, recording, for instance the sense of exhilarating internationalist triumph provoked by early events in the revolution, seen as the 'triumph of human kind'... Williams notes the importance of women in the Revolution, mostly behind the scenes" (Orlando). The books were received with positive reviews and "became an important source of information for the British reading public", championed by its contemporaries as a "unique and valuable work whose epistolary style and appeal to pathos set it apart - in a positive sense - from standard history" (Kennedy, pp. 317-18). The first volume is an engaging travel narrative which begins at a mass at Notre Dame on the eve of the Fête de la Fédération and recounts visits to the ruins of the Bastille, the National Assembly, and the Palace of Versailles. The book endorses the politics of the Revolution Society with which Williams (1761-1827) was associated as the protegée of Andrew Kippis. The second volume covers the period 1791-2 and celebrates the acceptance of the new Constitution by the King; the third and fourth volumes, bringing the narration up to 1793, criticize Robespierre severely and were published anonymously because of the Reign of Terror. The later four volumes (1795-6), not present here, detail events after the fall of the Jacobin government and the execution of Robespierre. Williams was both much admired and much maligned by her contemporaries. Her works were favoured by Wordsworth and her literary salon in Paris was attended by the likes of Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Francisco de Miranda, yet she was branded by Edmund Burke, alongside Wollstonecraft, as one of the "clan of desperate, wicked, and mischievously ingenious women" (Kennedy, p. 326) who were publishing radicalizing, pro-revolutionary works at the turn of the century. Four volumes, duodecimo (172 x 100 mm). Contemporary calf, smooth spines tooled in gilt, red and green morocco labels, gilt decoration to board edges, yellow edges. Mid 20th-century book label to rear pastedown of vol. I. Extremities a little rubbed, spine ends and corners worn, splits to joints of all volumes, but firm, front joint of vol. I repaired, blanks excised, marginal browning to a few initial and final leaves in each book from turn-ins, occasional faint foxing and small marks to contents, otherwise clean. Still a very good set. ESTC N34939, N39911 & T127414. Deborah Kennedy, "Benevolent Historian: Helen Maria Williams and Her British Readers", in Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, 2001.