The shift in narrative method is seen as a response to anxieties about the French Revolution, with the epistolary, feminized, and sentimental plot replaced by a more authoritarian third-person mode as part of a wider redrawing of the relation between the individual and social consensus.

Eventually settling in Paris with her mother and two sisters, Williams hosted a Parisian salon that was frequented by many of Europe's most important politicians, artists, writers, and thinkers, including J. P. Brissot, Madame Roland, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Alexander von Humboldt.".

Annotated author catalogue with subject entries under person and place. Comp. by George Lincoln Burr, W.H. Hudson and A.V. Babine.

British Women's Life Writing, 1760-1840 brings together for the first time a wide range of print and manuscript sources to demonstrate women's innovative approach to self-representation. It examines canonical writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, and Helen Maria Williams, amongst others.