CLARKE, James Stanier, & John McArthur.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, K.B. from His Lordship's Manuscripts. First edition, in a distinguished binding by Christian Kalthoeber, one of the preeminent binders of the day, enhanced by a pair of contemporary fore-edge paintings, the first showing a coastal landscape with a Martello tower and ships in the offing, the second being a vigorous rendering of the Battle of Trafalgar at its crisis.The Thorne Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago holds a copy bound by Hering that has similar fore-edge paintings: "A harbour-view is painted on Volume I and the Battle of Trafalgar is vividly depicted on Volume II" (Weber, p. 123).John McArthur, a former naval purser, had served with Nelson in the Mediterranean and had already begun collecting material for a biography when he saw "an advertisement in the papers announcing that the Nelson family had selected a gentleman 'of high respectability and rank' to write the life, and asking all who had letters... in their possession not to make their material available to anyone else" (White, p. 99).McArthur came forward, claiming, groundlessly, that Nelson himself had asked him to write his life, and that he had already incurred considerable expense in preparing the book, including the commissioning of a set of paintings to be engraved as illustrations. An unseemly squabble ensued, the outcome of which was fairly inevitable, in that Earl Nelson was under pressure from the Prince Regent to commission his librarian and chaplain, James S

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