Customer Reviews

Nelson: The New Letters

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I buy all books on Horatio Lord Nelson, and especially enjoy those based on, or containing, Nelson's own letters and other documents. I was thus excited to learn that Colin White, our greatest living Nelson authority, had compiled a new book of unpublished Nelson sources. Yet, without wishing to diminish Mr White's fantastic effort in finding and compiling these letters, they don't change our interpretation of many (or perhaps any) of the key events in Nelson's life. They do SUPPORT the correctness, however, of analyses advanced in many recent books, including Joel Hayward's, Brian Lavery's, John Sugden's and, naturally, Mr White's own beautiful books. This volume is a fine looking book too, with an attractive cover and excellent plates. I hope readers won't think me unkind for not recommending five stars, which I usually give to Mr White's books. But four stars still indicates that this is a very worthy book.

Let me start by laying out what this book is: it is a printing of a sizable fraction of 1,300 newly discovered pieces of correspondence from Horatio Nelson and reprinting of a few pieces that had previously been published in highly edited fashion, organized partially by timeframe and partially by topic. The letters are printed in fairly original form (although in type rather than script) with minimal modification to enhance the readability without changing the sense of the content.

I normally do not find tomes of letters and memos to be of great interest in themselves, nor am I a Nelson scholar who will devour everything and anything on the subject. As such, I found the book fairly dry reading. However, Colin White has done a great service by printing this correspondence to help make the material more readily available for historical research, as well as providing a reasonable categorization of the pieces. He also provides a nice bit of commentary to introduce each topic, helping the reader with some context with which to view the letters. It would appear that these letters do shed some new light on lesser known areas of the life of Nelson, but I would not look for any earth shattering revelations. There are a couple of nice appendices including a nice timeline and the ships he commanded.

For those more interested in a biography of Nelson, I would suggest For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War by Joel Hayward.

That phrase from The Naval Review says it all - this is a wonderful book, with new insights on almost every page. It really is remarkable that so much material has remained unpublished until Colin White dug it out and the story of how this treasure trove of new material was unearthed by patient, meticulous scholarship is almost as fascinating as the new letters themselves. Nelson emerges from this new material in a more rounded, and much more fascinating guise - so much of the new stuff is from private letters and, in them, he reveals much more of himself than in the more formal, official dispatches and letters on which all previous biographers have had to rely. The book also examines areas that all the previous biographies have missed, or touched on only briefly - for example, Nelson's remarkable Intelligence network in the Mediterranean in 1803/5. Above all, as most of the professional reviews have highlighted, this book demonstrates what a wonderful writer Nelson was. Colin White's short but finely crafted commentaries that introduce each section, help us to understand the ways in which the new material challenges (or supports) the traditional narrative. All future biographies will draw extensively on this book. What a superb tribute to Nelson in this his bicentenary year!

This is the sort of book that only comes around once in a lifetime. It is a wonderful compilation of some of the 1,000+ unpublished letters that have been unearthed by the Nelson letters project. They have been very cleverly arranged so that Nelson tells his own story in his own words.

And what words! I had no idea that Nelson was so good with the pen - almost like a novelist or a poet. None of the other books I have read about him have given me such a powerful insight into the workings of his mind.

Another joy of the book are the excellent short essays that introduce each section of letters, written by the editor, Colin White. He is of course our leading Nelson scholar, and it shows. His essays and footnotes are superb and realy help to highlight just how important the new material is.

Some excellent illustrations, some good helpful plans and some generous appendices, including a most useful set of potted biographies of some of the key characters. No glossary however which is a pity.

There have been so many books about Nelosn this last year, but this one stands still out. I suspect that it is the one that will last and become a classic that will still be studied 100 years from now.

First, a disclaimer. I have never been nor do I now claim to be a Nelson scholar. 18th-19th century naval history is not one of my primary interests so I am not well-read in that topic. So my comments must be taken in the context of an inability to compare with other great works on Nelson's life.

With that said, I still suspect this incredible volume is perhaps the monumental work on Nelson that gives us an inside view of his life and character. Through an extensive collection of letters, organized into the six distinct periods of Nelson's life, the author takes us into Nelson's thoughts and accomplishments. Nelson was inspiring to many and his letters can still inspire us today. The extent of his correspondence is staggering to say the least.

Along with the very large collection of correspondence are interspersed illustrations of people, letters, and places in the story. Also included are several very fine maps for clarrifying locations and battle chronology. A fantastic biographical history of an incredible individual who shaped the destiny of an empire from his writing desk nearly as much as from the decks of the empire's warships.