Helen Maria Williams (1761 or 1762 – 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, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France.
A controversial figure in her own time, the young Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth, but (especially at the height of the French Revolution) she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton.
Famous quotes containing the words helen, maria and/or williams:
“A baby is God’s way of saying the world should go on.”
—Doris Smith. quoted in What Is a Baby?, By Richard and Helen Exley.
“It were a blessed sight to see
That child become a willow tree,
His brother trees among.
He’d be four times as tall as me,
And live three times as long.”
—Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834)
“That’s what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him: “You’ll be all right.””
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, and Lester Cole. Raoul Walsh. Mr. Williams (Henry Hull)