The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson K.B. from His Lordship’s Manuscripts, By The Rev. James Stanier Clarke, F.R.S. Librarian to The Prince, And Chaplain Of His Royal Highness’s Household. And John M’Arthur, Esq. LL. D. Late Secretary To Admiral Lord Viscount Hood, London, Printed By T. Bensley, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. For T. Cadell and W. Davies, In The Strand. And W. Miller, Albermarle Street]. 1809. In Two Volumes.
This is a first edition set, extra illustrated, of Clarke and M’Arthur’s important biography of Lord Nelson. The two volumes are 3/4 bound on half blue morocco, with five raised bands, gilt titles, six gilt compartments with corner devices, marbled endpapers with bookplates from the libraries of R. C. Anderson and Ira Dye, U.S.N. and a small green bookseller’s label from George Gregory, Bookseller to H.M. Queen Alexandra, Bath.
The color frontis depicts Nelson dying (“The Immortality of Nelson”) engraved by Charles Heath after a painting by Benjamin West, with a dedication page to His Royal Highness George Augustus Frederick The Prince (The Prince of Wales), then a two-page advertisement from the authors thanking the Prince, William Earl Nelson (Lord Nelson’s brother), Lady Nelson for providing letters from her late husband, and several other dignitaries, including the Earl of Egremont, in helping the authors write this biography. A fifteen-page list of orders received for the set prior to publication has a one-line erratum at the end, adding one name to the list, then there are thirty-five pages of Contents for both volumes (i - xxxv), followed by Explanations of the Engravings for the two books (i - xiv), a facsimile of a letter from Lord Nelson, beautiful colored portraits of Lord Nelson and Emma Hart (Lady Hamilton) as “A Baccanth”, then an introduction and 359 pages of text and engravings in Volume I, an Appendix with Lord Nelson’s family tree and details about the Battle of Trafalgar, for a total of 375 pages in Volume I and 511 pages in Volume II, with four maps of battle plans in Volume II, including a fold-out map for the Battle of the Nile, a regular map for the Attack off Copenhagen, and two maps for the Battle of Trafalgar - one at the commencement and one at the close of the battle; fifteen of the extra illustrations are hand-colored, all the pages are printed on high-quality thick paper, and all the edges are gilt.
James Stanier Clarke was Nelson’s librarian and chaplain, and the two-volume set was printed by Thomas Bensely and published by Thomas Cadell and William Davies, a publishing firm established in London in the mid 1790’s. The authors relied on the collection of manuscripts now in the British Museum and known as the Bridgeport Collection, and they borrowed letters from friends of Lord Nelson as well as from his wife, Lady Hamilton, to complete this important biography.
We are not sure how many first editions were printed, but Lowndes notes there were about 1200 subscribers who signed up before publication to receive these two volumes, and if that is any indication of how many first editions were printed, that’s a small number indeed. (William Thomas Lowndes was an English bibliographer whose principal work, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature, was the first systematic work of its kind and was published in four volumes in 1834. It took Lowndes fourteen years to complete.)
The set is 4 To. and each volume measures 13 1/2 x 11 1/4 in. wide, and Volume I is
2 1/2 in. deep while Volume II is 2 3/4 in. deep. The gilt on the spines is lightly faded, with light rubbing at the tips, and the second volume has wear at the crown; there is light browning on the front blank endpapers of the first volume, not on the marbled endpapers, and the colored frontis at the beginning of the first volume has light browning in the margins, otherwise the plates and text are very clean, the binding is tight, and still a rare and attractive first edition set about the life of Lord Nelson.