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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
This was a wonderful book to read when one is on a bus for eight hours. It's absorbing, interesting, and at least nominally "nonfiction," so you feel like you're maybe learning something.
I kept running into references to Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson's relationships in fiction and started looking for a good book to read on the subject. This book both was and was not the book I was looking for.
On its strong side, it's clear that Williams put a ton of research into this book. She traipsed all across Europe and pursued mountains of primary source material. She is also clearly a very curious, clever woman, with a lot of imagination and the ability to expand upon scant information. This is a valuable asset in a researcher, as long as it is balanced by a healthy respect for the facts, and a consciousness that while we can speculate and extrapolate from facts, we can't know anything that isn't supported by facts.
At times in this book, Williams commits the academic sin of letting her imagination run away with her. Depending on what you were looking for in a book, this could be either good or bad. If you were looking for a ripping read, this is wonderful. She comes up with very colorful, exciting hypotheses that at least started based in fact. However, if you are reading this for historical edification, these flights of fancy get in the way. Yes, it's possible that Emma's grandfather died of alcohol overdose or was killed by Emma's grandmother, but it's also just as likely he died in an accident or of an illness that just wasn't documented at the time. Yes, it's possible that Emma protested, fussed, and didn't have a physical relationship with Nelson until her husband subtly gave her the go-ahead, but it seems a tad more likely that (as her husband was getting on in years) she just dove in for the glory of being Admiral Lord Nelson's lover.
Williams commits the other sin biographers are prone to, that of falling in love with her subject. Emma Hamilton, who began life as Amy Lyons and hoped to end it as Emma, Lady Nelson, is a very dynamic woman. She was clearly beautiful and charismatic. She stirred pots all over Europe, and interacted with some of the best people. However, Williams glosses over some of the less-savory facts about Emma. She consistently downplays Emma's emotional insecurities and neediness. (From other sources, I know that Emma was rather famous for the kind of cattiness that includes telling your friends a party isn't much to dress for and then showing up yourself in a cloth-of-gold dress with a diamond tiara).
Williams also makes much of Emma's love for both William Hamilton and Horatio Nelson. I am sure that Emma loved both of these men. However, Williams skates right over the fact that Emma reinvented herself--her morals, clothes, hobbies, and manner of speech--for each of the men in her life. She went from being a party girl for the first man to take her in, to a reformed woman for Greville, to the perfect ambassador's wife for Hamilton, to the perfect lover and PR manager for Nelson. What is never really clear is what Emma wanted for Emma. The answer may just be that she wanted to be rich, famous, envied, and adored, but it wasn't explored to my satisfaction.
This was a very enjoyable book if you take it with a lot of salt, much like a margarita, and don't let some of the more egregious logical leaps offend you. It was the perfect weekend vacation read, and I would recommend it to anyone curious about the period. Not as a resource, but more of an introduction.
I kept running into references to Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson's relationships in fiction and started looking for a good book to read on the subject. This book both was and was not the book I was looking for.
On its strong side, it's clear that Williams put a ton of research into this book. She traipsed all across Europe and pursued mountains of primary source material. She is also clearly a very curious, clever woman, with a lot of imagination and the ability to expand upon scant information. This is a valuable asset in a researcher, as long as it is balanced by a healthy respect for the facts, and a consciousness that while we can speculate and extrapolate from facts, we can't know anything that isn't supported by facts.
At times in this book, Williams commits the academic sin of letting her imagination run away with her. Depending on what you were looking for in a book, this could be either good or bad. If you were looking for a ripping read, this is wonderful. She comes up with very colorful, exciting hypotheses that at least started based in fact. However, if you are reading this for historical edification, these flights of fancy get in the way. Yes, it's possible that Emma's grandfather died of alcohol overdose or was killed by Emma's grandmother, but it's also just as likely he died in an accident or of an illness that just wasn't documented at the time. Yes, it's possible that Emma protested, fussed, and didn't have a physical relationship with Nelson until her husband subtly gave her the go-ahead, but it seems a tad more likely that (as her husband was getting on in years) she just dove in for the glory of being Admiral Lord Nelson's lover.
Williams commits the other sin biographers are prone to, that of falling in love with her subject. Emma Hamilton, who began life as Amy Lyons and hoped to end it as Emma, Lady Nelson, is a very dynamic woman. She was clearly beautiful and charismatic. She stirred pots all over Europe, and interacted with some of the best people. However, Williams glosses over some of the less-savory facts about Emma. She consistently downplays Emma's emotional insecurities and neediness. (From other sources, I know that Emma was rather famous for the kind of cattiness that includes telling your friends a party isn't much to dress for and then showing up yourself in a cloth-of-gold dress with a diamond tiara).
Williams also makes much of Emma's love for both William Hamilton and Horatio Nelson. I am sure that Emma loved both of these men. However, Williams skates right over the fact that Emma reinvented herself--her morals, clothes, hobbies, and manner of speech--for each of the men in her life. She went from being a party girl for the first man to take her in, to a reformed woman for Greville, to the perfect ambassador's wife for Hamilton, to the perfect lover and PR manager for Nelson. What is never really clear is what Emma wanted for Emma. The answer may just be that she wanted to be rich, famous, envied, and adored, but it wasn't explored to my satisfaction.
This was a very enjoyable book if you take it with a lot of salt, much like a margarita, and don't let some of the more egregious logical leaps offend you. It was the perfect weekend vacation read, and I would recommend it to anyone curious about the period. Not as a resource, but more of an introduction.
Beautifully told biography. Read like fiction. Tragic but lovely history of a woman no one knows much about.
My concern is that so much of this is speculation. Various sources state that not much is known of Emma's life before the age of 12, but Williams speculates so much. The conclusions she draws about Emma's father is rather insane. Where's the evidence of it? Or rather what are her sources to claim such conclusions.
Even though this is supposed to be a sort of biography, I sort of read it as a dramatization of an extraordinary rags to riches to rags story. It's such a crazy story of intrigue, sex, affairs, politics that it's almost seem too fantastical to the real. But after seeing her portrait so many times in London galleries and museums I just had to know her story and it's an intriguing one.
Even though this is supposed to be a sort of biography, I sort of read it as a dramatization of an extraordinary rags to riches to rags story. It's such a crazy story of intrigue, sex, affairs, politics that it's almost seem too fantastical to the real. But after seeing her portrait so many times in London galleries and museums I just had to know her story and it's an intriguing one.
The story of Emma Hamilton seemed really interesting, but the book is so badly written that I couldn't bring myself to finish it.
Lots of supposition, often goes too far in its assertions about Emma's state of mind and motives. The time and subject matter are interesting but I would've preferred something a little more scholarly.
This is the book that made me realize how much I love my Kindle books: lugging it around as the author annoyed me increasingly only increased my annoyance with the whole endeavor of reading this book in dead tree format.
You know how people say a good nonfiction book can read like a novel? In this case, that's not a compliment. Williams should have written a historical fiction "biography", because that's essentially what this is, though it's not so compelling. As others have said, there are far too many suppositions with far too few sources, notes, or evidence. The sad thing is that she mentioned a number of striking things about 18th century life that I was curious to learn more about, but she provided no path to go learn more about any of them, let alone some of the things she improbably intuited about Emma and her family.
The other sad thing, probably not the fault of Williams, is that like Georgiana (whose biography by Amanda Foreman was well written and footnoted), I came to dislike Emma and Nelson both by the end of their story.
You know how people say a good nonfiction book can read like a novel? In this case, that's not a compliment. Williams should have written a historical fiction "biography", because that's essentially what this is, though it's not so compelling. As others have said, there are far too many suppositions with far too few sources, notes, or evidence. The sad thing is that she mentioned a number of striking things about 18th century life that I was curious to learn more about, but she provided no path to go learn more about any of them, let alone some of the things she improbably intuited about Emma and her family.
The other sad thing, probably not the fault of Williams, is that like Georgiana (whose biography by Amanda Foreman was well written and footnoted), I came to dislike Emma and Nelson both by the end of their story.
Eh. The story of Emma is rather interesting and a true rags to riches to rags cautionary tale. It has all the components of great late Georgian stories: classism, snobbery, sex, beauty, courtesans, playboys and pimps, absurd wealth and despairing destitution, gender struggles, avarice, deluded grandeur and real historical drama. That said, the author's adulation of her heroine blinded her to Emma's fatal flaws and more disappointingly missed an opportunity to draw culturally apt reflections on the real story of this woman's mindful efforts to be a grand dame. The author's insistence that Emma was the catalyst for all fashions and style during her brief reign is simply asinine. That Emma was a reality star and trend-setter is undeniable but her real cleverness lay in anticipating style trends (I.e. neoclassicalism and the Empire) and co-opting them to her distinctive beauty and sensuousness.
An interesting story, a mediocre biography.
An interesting story, a mediocre biography.
Really enjoyed this one. Whilst I agree a lot of the earlier stuff is padded out with a lot of what other women in her situation would have done, I still come away from it being fascinated by Lady Hamilton and her life. I knew next to nothing about Nelson and Emma before. Enjoyed the latter part of the book more than the first couple of chapters as it's more historically accurate. Thoroughly enjoyed!
For the longest time, biographical material about Emma Hamilton was difficult to find--either it was repressively short, as befitted a woman "no better than she should be" or else disgustingly salacious. Here's a biography that is sympathetic to women caught in the horrible position of being poor, with few options for earning daily bread.
In the 1770s, when Emma (then Amy) was pretty much on her own, she either had to work under grinding misery for abysmal wages--and could be dismissed on a whim, which she was--or she turned to the theater--or to the streets. Emma worked all three career choices before being taken up by Charles Greville, who kept her while she had another man's baby (she was in her mid-teens), and when he tired of her, passed her off to his older uncle, Sir William Hamilton, who treated her well, fell in love with her, and eventually married her. She proved to be the wife he needed--until Horatio Nelson sailed into port, after which Emma and Nelson became what the other needed, until Nelson's tragic death at Trafalgar. Emma outlived him by a little over ten years.
So much are the basic facts. A great deal was subsequently published about Emma, as she became a celebrity before she ever laid eyes on Nelson. Though she never hid her humble origins, she didn't talk much about them, and about poor women there is scant material, so what we get in the early part of this book is a vivid look at what life in London was like during the mid-century--and a whole lot of guesswork about what might have happened to Emma and her family, and what they might have thought. In fact, all the way through there are a lot of uncited glimpses into minds and motives--usually the playground of the fictioneer.
The book becomes more trustworthy once Emma moves to Naples, about which a great deal is known. Even more vivid is the picture Williams paints of Neopolitan life before and during the French Revolution, and the scary days when Napoleon's forces were on the march toward the south.
Equally descriptive is the Hamilton/Hamilton/Nelson menage, but once again I was surprised to see nothing said about Winifred Gerin's careful work proving that Emma had twins, and that she kept only one of the girls. (There is a reference in the Williams book to one of Nelson's letters that refers to twins, which Williams blithely explains is a sexual reference. Where did she get that?)
So to sum up, I'd say: this eminently readable biography blurs the line between fact and fiction. It does have a splendid biography, and is full of interesting photos.
In the 1770s, when Emma (then Amy) was pretty much on her own, she either had to work under grinding misery for abysmal wages--and could be dismissed on a whim, which she was--or she turned to the theater--or to the streets. Emma worked all three career choices before being taken up by Charles Greville, who kept her while she had another man's baby (she was in her mid-teens), and when he tired of her, passed her off to his older uncle, Sir William Hamilton, who treated her well, fell in love with her, and eventually married her. She proved to be the wife he needed--until Horatio Nelson sailed into port, after which Emma and Nelson became what the other needed, until Nelson's tragic death at Trafalgar. Emma outlived him by a little over ten years.
So much are the basic facts. A great deal was subsequently published about Emma, as she became a celebrity before she ever laid eyes on Nelson. Though she never hid her humble origins, she didn't talk much about them, and about poor women there is scant material, so what we get in the early part of this book is a vivid look at what life in London was like during the mid-century--and a whole lot of guesswork about what might have happened to Emma and her family, and what they might have thought. In fact, all the way through there are a lot of uncited glimpses into minds and motives--usually the playground of the fictioneer.
The book becomes more trustworthy once Emma moves to Naples, about which a great deal is known. Even more vivid is the picture Williams paints of Neopolitan life before and during the French Revolution, and the scary days when Napoleon's forces were on the march toward the south.
Equally descriptive is the Hamilton/Hamilton/Nelson menage, but once again I was surprised to see nothing said about Winifred Gerin's careful work proving that Emma had twins, and that she kept only one of the girls. (There is a reference in the Williams book to one of Nelson's letters that refers to twins, which Williams blithely explains is a sexual reference. Where did she get that?)
So to sum up, I'd say: this eminently readable biography blurs the line between fact and fiction. It does have a splendid biography, and is full of interesting photos.
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced