In the 1790s, when Charlotte Smith and Helen Maria Williams were at the peak of their critical reputations, they were known to each other and often cited together approvingly. It was Smith who provided the young William Wordsworth with a letter of introduction to Williams when he visited France in 1791 (though she had left by the time he got there). By the end of the decade Smith and Williams were being cited together more pejoratively, as two of...