Williams lived an adventurous life, much of it in France beginning in 1790 where, at least in its more moderate phases, she defended the Revolution in books, letters, and poems. Before that time, she wrote poetry on many themes characteristic of the Sensibility and Romantic movements, and took part in the sonnet revival of her time. Wordsworth admired her “Sonnet to Twilight”; his own first published sonnet was addressed to her.