Emma Hamilton.
Lofts, Norah.
Place Published: London:
Publisher: Book Club Associates,
Date Published: 1978.
Description: 8vo - over 7" - 9" Tall. BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES. The book is FINE. Dust jacket is NEAR FINE with minor wear. Comes with BRODART jacket cover. 192 pages with color and black & white illustrations. JMVintage specializes in books, magazines, and treasures related to the Duke & Duchess of Windsor..and other curious subjects like famous courtesans. Dust jacket notes read: "What carried this blacksmith's daughter: a girl of no education and with a reputation lost by the time she was sixteen-to the unique position she held at a most critical time in England's history? She was beautiful, as the portraits by Romney and the other artists bear witness, but the Queen of Naples, a proud Habsburg, would hardly have taken political advice from a young woman and then entrusted her with the handling of millions of pounds worth of treasure and evacuation of the Royal Family, simply because she was good-looking. Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador in Naples, also proud and worldly, married her, to the detriment of his career. Why? Her beauty? He must have been accustomed to it: she had been his mistress for years. Would a mere pretty face, past its prime at the age of 33, have made Nelson at 40, happily married and extremely ambitious, sacrifice so much, including his puritan conscience, for the sake of a love affair that involved cuckolding a man he respected, and made the curious mÈnage a trios the butt of every cartoonist and gossip-monger in London? That she was no ordinary woman is apparent from the way she attracted both staunch friends and virulent enemies, not by beauty alone but by her unique character. For not only was she exceptionally lovely in the classical style, so fashionable at the time, she also possessed intelligence, ambition, generosity, impulsiveness, joie de vivre and large measure of that quality which another age was to call sex appeal. Emma rose from rags to riches but fate was to write her a bitter ending to her story. Her seven-year love affair with Nelson came to an abrupt end, when Britain's hero died gloriously at the Battle of Trafalgar. Emma subsided into penury, alcoholism, self-pity and ultimately a squalid death in Calais, surrounded by her lover's and her country's enemies. Few biographers have written so poignantly and so sympathetically of these declining years as Norah Lofts does. Only a writer of such sensitivity as Norah Lofts could so brilliantly capture such a chameleonic character as Emma Hamilton. Her lurid narrative is enhanced by selections from Emma's letters and many portraits by the great painters of her time."
Edition: First editionBinding: Hard Copy
Condition: Fine in Near Fine dj
Book Id: 6041
Price: $22.50
