Nelson by Carola Oman

This classic study emphasizes the admiral’s personality and character and draws on a wealth of primary sources, including Nelsons letters. Carola Oman’s classic work sets the standard against which all biographies of Nelson can be judged. The first accounts of the life of Britain’s most famous admiral contained many inaccuracies and flaws which were repeated in the works of later writers. Carola Oman, however, ‘had more and better material than anyone who went before her; and she used it so brilliantly that everyone who came after her was bound to be influenced by her work’, as Stephen Howarth writes in his Introduction to this new edition. Carola Oman had access not only to all of the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century accounts of Nelson’s life and battles but also to primary sources (including Nelson’s letters in autograph) which either had never been published or had suffered from unscrupulous editing. With these resources she was able to check, correct and develop much of what had previously appeared in print, discarding the myths that had gained credence through repetition. This new edition of Nelson contains her original source notes in full.