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and the Palace of Versailles, Letters on the French Revolution clearly and sympathetically endorses the politics of the Revolution Soci- ety with which Williams (1761–1827) was associated as the protegé of Andrew Kippis. It was the first of eight volumes on the topic by Williams which collectively became known as the Letters Written in France (1790–6), considered “an importance source of informa- tion for the British reading public” and praised 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. 317–8). 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” who were publishing radicalising, pro-revolutionary works at the turn of the century. Kennedy, Deborah, “Benevolent Historian: Helen Maria Williams and Her British Readers”, Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution , State Uni- versity of New York Press, 2001. £1,500 [126381] 164 (THE WOMEN’S WAR; NIGERIA.) Report of the Commission of Inquiry appointed to Inquire into the Disturbances in the Calabar and Owerri Provinces, December, 1929. Lagos: printed by the Government Printer, 1930
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163 WILLIAMS, Helen Maria. Letters on the French Revolution, written in France, in the summer of 1790, to a friend in England. Boston: J. Belknap and A. Young, 1791 Octavo (185 × 108 mm). Contemporary blue paper wrappers, skilfully re- stored, stab-sewn, edges uncut. Engraved headpiece. Manuscript title in ink to front wrapper, “Helen Maria Williams’s Letters on the French Revolution, By comforting a persecuted pair of Lovers she herself finds a noble and live- ly reward”, the same hand writing “Let our high Fed’ral British Faction in America read this happy Girl’s fine reflections here we shall find their aris- tocratic mania check’d for a time” to the margin of p. 135. Shelf numbers to front wrapper and title page. Some loss to spine professionally repaired, wrappers soiled and chipped, marginal tear to leaf C 5 , paper flaw to leaf E 5 touching a couple of characters, marginal puncture to leaf G 2 , occasional spotting and the odd stain, else a very good copy. first u.s. edition of the author’s first and most cited work on the french revolution, first published in London the previous year. 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,
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