Williams witnessed the Fête de la Fédération, the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and much of the Reign of Terror.

Williams' Letters express consistent confidence in the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality, even after the development of violence and war in France.

[1][2] She was prominent in the social circles of Dissenters and Whigs, connected to figures like Andrew Kippis, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and William Godwin.

[10] Her discussion of French social reform was unflaggingly optimistic, expressing her faith in the ideals of liberty and equality and her excitement that these principles could eliminate tyranny around the world.

[12] The first volume was published by T. Cadell in 1790 with the full title of Letters written in France, in the summer 1790, to a friend in England; containing various anecdotes relative to the French revolution; and memoirs of Mons.

The twenty-six letters cover Williams' visits to various locations associated with the Revolution, a history of the du Fossé family, and her own personal views alongside sociological observations.

She presents the revolution itself as a spectacle that unites the usually-opposed aesthetic categories of the sublime and the beautiful by making the awe-inspiring events open to participation from their viewers.

Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), for example, exemplified the expected combination of anecdotes, reflection, and elegant prose.

[25] Fulfilling these expectations, Williams's letter-writing persona is presented as a feminine and naïve sentimental heroine, who can convey political information unthreateningly because she is a passive observer.

[27] The epistolary form allows Williams to structure her history as individual anecdotes and descriptions, and allows any omissions to seem like a natural result of her personal experience.

[28] Unlike other travel writers, Williams does not say much about details like her lodging or food, instead emphasizing important events as in a historical narrative.

[36] However, there were some tensions with her personal acquaintance (particularly Hester Thrale Piozzi) when she returned briefly in 1792,[37] and the second volume of Letters published in 1792 met with a lukewarm reception.

[38] Critics expressed the prevailing British view that social progress in France had been obtained at too high a cost, and suggested that Williams' emotion — previously a sign of her elevated sensibility — was now clouding her judgement.

Addressed to Miss H. M. Williams, with Particular Reference to Her Letters from France (1793), Hawkins argued that women were unfit for politics, and that poetry was a more appropriate sphere for the expression of sensibility.

[40] This series, which attempted to retroactively capture the Reign of Terror, was also criticized for being disorganized and haphazard in its inclusion of documents, the epistolary mode conflicting with the book's historical scope.

[44] The more recent literary scholar Louise Duckling argues that twentieth-century critics accepted at face-value Williams's strategic narrative persona of passive femininity, and overlooked the seriousness of her writing.