Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #821941 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-20
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.66 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 524 pages

From Amazon.com
Accomplished British author Christopher Hibbert turns his attention to England's greatest maritime leader in this celebrated biography. Nelson joined the navy at age 12. By the time of his decisive victory over the French and Spanish at Trafalgar in 1805--a battle that would kill him--Nelson had lost his right arm and the sight in one eye from a life of naval combat. Nelson's activities on shore were often as intriguing as those at sea. Hibbert reveals a man loved by his fellow sailors but reviled by many social elites. Nelson, for example, carried on an extended affair with the wife of a powerful politician, and she even bore him a child. An absorbing book about a dynamic warrior.

From Publishers Weekly
Self-promoting, vain, risk-taking, thirsty for recognition and glory, English admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805)-who crippled Napoleon's fleets in the French Revolutionary wars-fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a sea officer. In this rousing, seaworthy biography, we meet a vexatious man whose short temper was exacerbated by the loss of an arm and an eye in combat. Falling madly in love with exuberant, obese ex-prostitute Lady Emma Hamilton, the wife of his host in Naples, British envoy Sir William Hamilton, Nelson neglected his own wife and later went through a mock marriage ceremony with Emma to sanctify his adulterous affair and assuage guilt. We also glimpse his softer side-financially generous to relatives; tenderly solicitous toward Horatia, his daughter by Emma; and stoic in pain, especially when mortally wounded in the Battle of Trafalgar, his tragic victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain. Drawing on letters and diaries of Nelson, Emma and their contemporaries, British historian Hibbert, biographer of Elizabeth I, has produced a magnificent flesh-and-blood portrait that minutely re-creates Nelson's daily cares, loves, feuds, battles, scandals and exploits.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this biography of Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), Hibbert, a recipient of the Royal Society of Literature award, uses sources such as journals, newspapers, manuscripts, and letters to offer a factually correct account that nonetheless leaves Nelson's character undeveloped. There is biographical information about Nelson and his career, but the main themes are his love life and his ego. Certainly, his affair with Lady Hamilton and his relationship with their daughter were important to his life, but since his naval victories are the reason for his fame, the fact that they receive so little attention here is disappointing. This book would work well in a large collection of British and military biographies where other aspects of his life and character could be found; for smaller libraries, David Howarth's Lord Nelson: The Immortal Memory (LJ 2/1/89) would be better.
Marilyn Dailey, Natrona Cty. P.L., Casper, Wy.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.