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ABSTRACT
This essay introduces two unpublished letters from Helen Maria Williams to Hester Lynch Piozzi, which are held in the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester. One of these is undated, but this essay identifies the year when the letter was written, based on the address Williams sent it from and other internal evidence. Through these two letters, this essay offers information about Williams’s temporary return to England during her planned two-year trip to France, and provides some insights into her friendship with Piozzi, which was not maintained after 1793.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. On 23 February 1791, Piozzi informed the Reverend Leonard Chappelow of Williams’s trip: “She is going to reside in France for two or three years” (Letters 1: 348).
2. Williams’s first trip to France was undertaken between July and early September, 1790. In her Letters from France, she provides an eyewitness account of France based on her experiences during her second trip, but the book only spans the period from September 1791 to April 1792.
3. The London Chronicle announced, “This Day was published, Price 3s. sewed, LETTERS from FRANCE,” 71 (June 1792): 613.
4. Prior to Williams’s arrival in London, Piozzi had already known about her intended return to England in the summer of 1792. See Piozzi’s letter to Penelope Sophia Weston (later Pennington, 1752?−1820), dated 20 November 1791 (Letters 1: 376).
5. These two unpublished letters are held in the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, GB 133 Eng MS 570.
6. In this and the following letter, I have modernized long s and standardized the dashes, but I have preserved Williams’s capitalization, spacing, punctuation, and superscripts.
7. The quotation here is from Andrew Kippis’s letter to Samuel Rogers, dated 14 November 1787, as cited by Clayden. Nothing is known about any other tenants of No. 15, except for the fact that a carpenter, Benjamin Timbrell, leased the house around 1723 (Sheppard).
8. Moore lived at 17 Clifford Street between 1784 and 1800 (Sheppard).
9. On 26 June 1793, Piozzi informed the Reverend Charles Este of her decision not to continue her correspondence with Williams (Letters 2: 127).