Life of Nelson

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0870213016, Hardcover)

Southey's biography of Britain's most famous naval hero is a rare combination of qualities. Over the years, this book has gained historical and literary importance, not only for the quality of its prose and insights into Nelson and his era, but also for its influence on such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville and Alfred Thayer Mahan. The revised one-volume biography was first published in 1830 to great popular acclaim and is now reprinted for the Naval Institute Press "Classic" series. Robert Southey, a peer of Coleridge, Byron and Wordsworth, was a regular contributor to many of the leading journals of his day. Asked to write a review of Nelson biographies that had been published within a few years of the hero's death, he found only "slovenly performances" and was encouraged to write one of his own. Southey was named Poet Laureat of England in 1813, the year that the book first appeared in two volumes.