Women's Travel Writings in Revolutionary France, Part I

Stephen Bending

Part I Volumes 1 & 2 Helen Maria Williams, Letters Containing a Sketch of the Scenes which Passed in Various Departments of France during the Tyranny of Robespierre (1796) Written at a moment of optimism after the brutal politics of the Terror, Helen Maria Williams's letters (drawn from her bestselling account of France in the 1790s) combine the sentimental language of sympathy with an account of the horrors of Republican violence and a detailed narrative of Robespierre's rise and fall. Volume 3 Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland (1798) Having fled to Switzerland following her critical account of Robespierre Williams's 1798 book relates the electrifying effects of the Revolution on the cantons; it combines an account of the topography of the Alps with an acerbic and sceptical commentary on the claim that liberty inevitably accompanies peace. Charlotte West, A Ten Years' Residence in France, During the Severest Part of the Revolution ... 1787 to 1797 (1821) Charlotte West who, like Williams, celebrated the fall of the Bastille and was later imprisoned by the republic, records the corruption, paranoia and violence of the Terror both in the provinces and in Paris: she claims to host the French royal family after they are turned back from Varennes and glimpses a 'gloomy' and 'mischievous' Napoleon.