Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions from the French by Helen Maria Williams

Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions by German explorer Alexander von Humboldt was translated into English by Helen Maria Williams (1759–1827). It consisted of seven volumes published between the years 1814 and 1829. Personal Narrative describes Humboldt’s and French botanist Aimé Bondpland’s five-year journey of exploration around South America between the years 1799 and 1804. It constitutes a hybrid text as it blends scientific report with travel writing in a way that made it accessible to a general readership. Humboldt was a regular visitor at Williams’s literary salon in Paris, and he was familiar with her work as a translator. In 1810, Humboldt asked Williams to translate his original travel account. Personal Narrative was the result of a close working collaboration between the two. Through translating Personal Narrative, Williams became an active participant in the transmission of the scientific discoveries at the turn of the nineteenth century, and her literary style made Humboldt’s work accessible to a broad English-reading public.