Ref: C125B001 / 7115

MEMOIRS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD VISCOUNT NELSON, DUKE OF BRONTE, &c. &c. FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC SOURCES ; WITH HIS WILL, AND CEREMONY OF THE PUBLIC FUNERAL. THE WORK IS ALSO INTERSPERSED WITH ORIGINAL ARTICLES, COLLECTED SOLELY FOR THIS PUBLICATION.

Anonymous.

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Availability: This item is in stock. One copy available.

Price: £900.00

Description: Birmingham, Printed and Sold by Swinney & Ferrall, (For the Proprietors), and may be had of all other Booksellers. 1st.ed., N.D. (1806). Iv + 68 pp., engrv. Port. frontis. Late 19th c. qtr. diced blue cloth; gilt lettering down length of spine; green marbled boards ; speckled edges. 20 x 12cm. “Gun Room” written in pencil on ffep so may have formed part of a ships’ library aboard one of H.M. Ships (probably Victorian). Boards rubbed with wear at extremities (cloth perfectly sound with tight hinges & joints) ; title-page & frontis browned, the latter cropped down fore-edge with the slightest of loss ; old (c. 19t c.) repair to lower edge (remaining leaves extremely clean & bright with virtually no foxing). V.G. An extremely rare contemporary provincial publication commemorating the life of Admiral Lord Nelson, with an account of his last Will and of his public funeral in 1806. Published in Birmingham by Swinney & Ferrall – who were situated in the High Street of the town - the engraved frontispiece contains an unusual half-length portrait of Nelson facing left, surrounded by laurel leaves and with engraved emblems below including an anchor, cannon, flags, boarding pike, trident and shield bearing the British flag. Ribbons proclaim three of his greatest battles : “Aboukir, Copenhagen, Trafalgar”. The frontispiece is dated “Decr. 21st, 1805”. The pamphlet originally sold at 1s. 6d. and it was hoped that its low price would ensure an extensive circulation. If this was achieved a very small number have survived two hundred years on. The work begins with the Memoir from Nelson’s birth at Burnham Thorpe in 1758 and his subsequent naval career from the time he went to sea at the age of twelve. It continues on to his death at Trafalgar in October 1805 with Collingwood’s dispatch written the day after the battle, and other copies of letters and official accounts that appeared in the London Gazette Extraordinary on the 27th November, 1805. The proclamation by King George III making Nelson’s elder brother, William, an Earl, and issued from Whitehall on November 9th 1805, is also given. An account is provided of Nelson’s last moments, Lord Nelson’s last Will and Testament, and Codicils, proved in Doctor’s Commons on the 23rd December 1805 ; and an anecdote of a Mr. Clay, of Birmingham, staying at Mrs. Michener’s Hotel, in Margate, in 1801, and visiting Deal where he met Lord Nelson, Sir William and Lady Hamilton – an anecdote not found elsewhere. There is also a brief account of Nelson’s visit to Birmingham in 1802 with an interesting list of the manufactories he and the Hamilton’s visited, including that of our Mr. H. Clay, Japanner in Ordinary to the King and Prince of Wales ; and the celebrated medal works at Soho. The book concludes with a description of Nelson’s funeral in January 1806, and four verses “from the Pen of a Gentleman whose critical and poetical Compositions, we have been for thirty years in the Habit of occasionally ushering to public Notice ; with which beautiful Poem the Work concludes.” A BIRMINGHAM PAMPHLET OF 1806 RECORDING THE MEMOIRS, WILL, FUNERAL, &c., OF LORD NELSON. EXTREMELY RARE.