Nelson's Letters to Lady Hamilton and Related Documents

Edited by Marianne R.E. Czisnik

Publication date:

31 December 2020

Length of book:

666 pages

Publisher

The Navy Records Society

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9781003047070

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

This fascinating book by Marianne Czisnik aims at critically reviewing Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton by bringing together important letters of theirs that have only been published in parts over the last 200 years. In doing so it is possible to assess their relationship and to obtain insights into Nelson's personality and his morality that are not revealed in his official correspondence. Lady Hamilton was so obviously lacking in the subservience and passivity expected from women in that era that authors started to exclude her public sphere of influence by reducing her to a private weakness of Nelson's, who could be successful at sea, where he was far away from the enthralling influence of a manipulating woman. The letters in this edition testify how Admiral Nelson's life at sea was not exclusively public nor was Lady Hamilton's life ashore solely private. It also shows how the two supposedly separate spheres of male and female lives were connected. This scholarly edition of the primary material consists of about 400 letters that Nelson wrote to Lady Hamilton during the last seven years of his life and about a dozen letters of her to him that have survived.

List of Illustrations ........................................................................age xi
Acknowledgements .....................................................................xiii
Preface...........................................................................................xv
General Introduction .......................................................................1
A. Choice of Documents................................................................1
B. Editorial Procedures ..................................................................2
C. Conditions under Which the Letters Were Written .................13
D. Outer Appearance of Letters ...................................................17
Abbreviations and Short Titles Used in Citations .........................23
I: The Beginning of an Enduring Relationship, June 1978-December 1800...........................................................
25
II: The Baltic Campaign, January-June 1801 ..............................97
III: The Channel Campaign, July-October 1801 .......................245
IV: Settled, May 1802-August 1805..........................................337
V: The End, September-October 1805 ......................................507
Appendices..................................................................................533
1. Selected List of Previous Publications....................................535
2.Chronology of Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton ..................539
3.Items Mentioned in the Letters, Nelson's Wills and Codicils to His Wills ...................................................................557
4.Poetry Referred to in Nelson's Letters....................................563
5.Minute of a Conversation with the Prince Royal of Denmark on 3 April 1801 ...........................................................567
6.The Taking of the Swift Cutter: An Attempt to Trace the Documents Captured by l'Espérance in 1804 ......................573
7.Documentation of Flow of Letters in Chapter IV (1803-1805)581
Sources and Documents ..............................................................597
Index ...........................................................................................619