Helen Maria Williams (1761 or 1762A1827) was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. She was an abolitionist, religious dissenter and supported of the French Revolution. Her 1786 Poems touch on topics ranging from religion to a critique of Spanish colonial practices. She allied herself with the cult of feminine sensibility, deploying it politically in opposition to war ("Ode on the Peace," a 1786 poem about Peru) and slavery (the abolitionist "Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade," 1788)."