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Helen Maria Williams and the Peace of 1783

ABSTRACT Helen Maria Williams’s Ode on the Peace, written on the occasion of the 1783 Peace of Paris (which officially ended the War of American Independence), considers two fundamental questions: how should the end of war be understood? and how should the arrival of peace be represented? Active in London Dissenting circles, Williams witnessed the hard work, letter-writing campaigns, and political petitioning that lay behind the 1783 treaty. In this essay, I argue that Williams knew that peace does not come merely when the war machines are exhausted, but is an achievement that must be earned, and crucial to her ode is her sense that this work is not over, for peace is not a mysterious visitation but a habit of life, one that writers have a responsibility to teach to readers.