Description

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.