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Historical person
1758–1805
Horatio Nelson was a Royal Navy officer whose victories made him Britain’s most celebrated commander of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. He lost an eye and an arm in service, destroyed French naval power at the Nile, fought at Copenhagen and defeated the combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson was killed during that battle. His relationship with Emma Hamilton and mastery of public reputation contributed to his lasting legend.
Nelson’s campaigns form the historical horizon of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower novels and Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series, whose fictional officers operate within the navy he helped define. He also appears directly in many naval novels. Fiction tends to emphasise inspirational command and tactical aggression, while modern treatments give greater attention to patronage, prize money, scandal and the political uses of naval heroism.
In Julian Stockwin’s Victory, Political conflict at the Admiralty forces him to choose between competing patrons while Nelson searches for the enemy. C. S. Forester’s Hornblower and the Atropos is set after helping organise the river procession for Nelson’s state funeral. Newly promoted Captain Hornblower takes command of the small sloop HMS Atropos. Other novels featuring Horatio Nelson include C. S. Forester’s Hornblower During the Crisis, Winston Graham’s The Black Moon, Winston Graham’s The Four Swans, Winston Graham’s The Angry Tide, and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Trafalgar.
Series
The quartet traces the parallel lives of Arthur Wellesley and Napoleon Bonaparte from their births in 1769 to the Battle of Waterloo. It follows their military education, political ambition and campaigns across Europe, India and the Mediterranean as two very different officers become the defining commanders of the…
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The Poldark novels follow Ross, Demelza and their family in Cornwall from the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and into the Regency aftermath. The series combines mining, gentry politics, coastal smuggling, marriage, family conflict and the pressure of war on…
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The Thomas Kydd series follows a Guildford wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy in 1793 and traces his rise from inexperienced landsman to admiral. Across twenty-seven novels, Kydd learns the work of the lower deck, crosses to the quarterdeck and commands increasingly important ships during the French Revolutionary…
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The Horatio Hornblower novels follow a Royal Navy officer from his first service as a midshipman during the French Revolutionary Wars to senior command after the defeat of Napoleon. The books combine shipboard life, naval combat, intelligence work, diplomacy and the practical burdens of command with Hornblower’s private…
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The Sharpe series follows Richard Sharpe from service as a private soldier in India to command in the British Army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The novels place him at the Siege of Seringapatam, Battle of Assaye, Siege of Gawilghur, Battle of Trafalgar, British attack on Copenhagen,…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
