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NELSON by Christopher Hibbert First published 1994 by Viking |
A black cloth bound book with gilt lettering to the spine in Near Fine condition in a Very Good un-price-clipped wrapper
with some light chipping to extremities.
£6.00 + P & P
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Publisher's blurbs
When news of the battle of Trafalgar reached London on a foggy November morning in 1805, The Times did not know whether to 'mourn or rejoice'. For, although it was the 'most splendid victory ever to grace the annals of England', 'the great and gallant Nelson' was no more.
The whole nation mourned the loss of a man, born forty-seven years before in a country parsonage in Norfolk, who had caught the imagination of the people as no other hero in history. In this absorbing book, Christopher Hibbert recounts in detail the events of those years, from the morning when the small midshipman stood nervously on the dockyard at Chatham, wondering how to get aboard his ship and enter the strange wooden world of the Navy, until the long afternoon when, as Admiral, he lay dying in the dim light of the swaying lanterns below the Victory's waterline, while the cannon roared on the gun-decks above his head.
We see Nelson ashore as well as at sea, as an attentive though frustrated officer on half-pay in East Anglia; in Naples as the passionate lover of Emma, the Cheshire blacksmith's daughter who had become the wife of the British envoy at the Neapolitan court; and at home at Merton Place in Surrey, playing with the adored little girl whom he could not acknowledge as his daughter.
Self-regarding, humourless, sometimes petulant and often vain to the point of absurdity, Nelson's character is revealed with all its faults and all those virtues which endeared him to his family, his friends and the sailors whose welfare so deeply concerned him.
Based on a wide variety of manuscript and printed sources which are fully documented, Nelson contains much fascinating material, published here for the first time.
Christopher Hibbert was born in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He served as an infantry officer during the war, was twice wounded and was awarded the MC in 1945. Described in the New Statesman as a 'pearl of biographers', he is, in the words of the Times Educational Supplement, 'perhaps the most gifted popular historian we have'. His much acclaimed books include The Destruction of Lord Raglan (which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962); Benito Mussolini; Garibaldi and his Enemies; London: The Biography of a City; The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici; Rome: The Biography of a City; The Virgin Queen: The Personal History of Elizabeth I and Florence: The Biography of a City.
Christopher Hibbert is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two sons and a daughter and lives in Henley-on-Thames.
`Among the most versatile of living historians, Mr Hibbert combines impeccable scholarship with a liveliness of style that lures the reader from page to page' — Sunday Telegraph
The front cover shows a preparatory study for the formal portrait of Nelson by John Hoppner now in the Royal Collection. Reproduced by courtesy of The Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth
Contents
List of Illustrations
Illustration Acknowledgements
Author's Note
Family Tree
1 Burnham Thorpe
2 Chatham, the Arctic and the West Indies
3 The Mosquito Shore
4 The North American Station
5 France and the Leeward Islands
6 The Island of Nevis
7 Norfolk
8 The Mediterranean
9 The Palazzo Sessa io Corsica
Cape St Vincent
12 Cadiz and Tenerife
13 Bath, London and Toulon
14 Abu Qir
15 Naples
16 Palazzo Reale
I7 Palermo
18 The Bay of Naples
19 The Colli Palace
20 Germany
21 London and Fonthill
22 The Channel
23 The Kattegat
24 Copenhagen
25 The Thames Valley and Boulogne
26 Merton Place
27 The West Country
28 Surrey
29 The Victory
3o Return to Merton
31 Portsmouth
32 The Atlantic Approaches
33 Trafalgar
34 Mourning
35 St Paul's
The Fate of Characters Whose End is not Recorded in the Text
Chronology
References
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
COLOUR
1. Horatio Nelson as an eighteen-year-old lieutenant, by John Francis Rigaud
2. The parsonage house at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, by Francis Pocock
3. The Church of All Saints, Burnham Thorpe, by M.E. Cotman
4. The Rev. Edmund Nelson, by Sir William Beechey
5. A view of Greenwich, by Thomas Priest
6. Portsmouth Point, by Thomas Rowlandson
7. Seamen carousing
8. Turning In, by Robert Seymour
9. Midshipman Nelson's fight with the polar bear, by Richard Westall
10
. Agamemnon, Vanguard, Elephant, Captain and Victory at Spithead, by Nicholas Pocock
11. Frances Nisbet
12. Ellis Cornelia Knight, by Angelica Kauffman
13. Mrs Cadogan, Lady Hamilton's mother
14. Sir William Hamilton, by Charles Grignion
15. Nelson being received by Admiral Jervis after the Battle of St Vincent, by A. D. McCormack
16. Nelson's encounter with the Spanish gunboat off Cadiz, by Richard Westall
17. Emma Hamilton, by Johann Heinrich Schmidt
18. Horatia Nelson
19. Merton Place
20. Emma Hamilton as Circe, by George Romney
21. Emma Hamilton as a bacchante, by George Romney
22. Emma Hamilton as Ariadne, by George Romney
23. Emma Hamilton as Cassandra, by George Romney
24. Nelson, by Sir William Beechey
25. Nelson, by Lemuel Francis Abbot
26. Nelson, by John Hoppner
27. Nelson, by Johann Heinrich Schmidt
28. The Battle of Copenhagen, by William Sadler
29. The Gallant heroes who commanded at Trafalgar on the 21st October 1805, by W. L. Craig
30. The Battle of Trafalgar, by J. M. W. Turner
31. The scene aboard the Victory at the moment Nelson was shot, by Denis Dighton
32. Captain Hardy stands over the dying Nelson, by Arthur Devis
33. The apotheosis of Nelson, by Benjamin West
34. The wax effigy of Nelson, by Catherine Andras
35. Britannia Bringing Her Dead Hero to Britannia's Shore
BLACK AND WHITE
1. Seamen climbing on board the 74-gun Hector, a drawing by Thomas Rowlandson
2. The scene on a gun deck while in port
3. Master William Blockhead packs his sea chest before embarking for the West India station
4. Sailors gambling and dancing while waiting to set sail
5. The rowdyism of the midshipmen's berth
6. A seaman, drawing by Thomas Rowlandson
7. A cabin boy, drawing by Thomas Rowlandson
8. The Royal Dockyard at Deptford, by Samuel Scott
9. The Royal Dockyard at Portsmouth
10. Miniatures of King Ferdinand of Naples and Queen Maria Carolina
11. Sir William Hamilton and his first wife, from a portrait by David Allan
12. Emma, Lady Hamilton, a drawing by Thomas Rowlandson
13. Boarding the San Nicolas, at the Battle of St Vincent
14. The surrender of the San Jose
15. HMS Theseus sailing with the fleet off Cadiz, from a painting by Thomas Luny
16. The first letter written by Nelson after the loss of his right arm
17. Celebrating the victory of the Nile, a drawing by Rowlandson
1
8. The chaplain of the Vanguard preaching after the Battle of the
Nile
19. Extirpation of the Plagues of Egypt, caricature by James Gillray
20. The Hero of the Nile, caricature by James Gillray
21. Dido in Despair, caricature by James Gillray
22. John Jervis, Earl of St Vincent, from the studio of Lemuel Abbott
23. Cuthbert, Lord Collingwood, by Henry Howard
24. Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, by Domenico Pellegrini
25. Sir Thomas Troubridge, by Sir William Beechey
26. Sir Hyde Parker, by George Romney
27. Sir Thomas Fremantle, from an engraving after Edmund Bristow
28. Sir Thomas Foley, by Henry Edridge
29. Sir William Beatty, by Arthur Devis
30. Nelson before the Battle of Trafalgar, from an engraving by C. W. Sharpe after the painting by Charles Lucy
31. Lord Nelson's funeral procession, from a drawing made by C. A. Pugin
32. The interment of Lord Nelson, from a lithograph by C. A. Pugin
33. Lady Hamilton as Britannia crowning a bust of Lord Nelson, from the painting by Thomas Baxter
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