Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir

Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness, 1834-1916Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
445K words
Chapters
45

Tags

English Originals General BiographyPolitical and Military Leaders Political CareerFamily MemoirNaval CommandersEnglish AristocracyVictorian Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a MemoirAuthor: Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness, 1834-1916,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Dec 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is a memoir by Elizabeth Philippa Biddulph (1834–1916) of Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke. The subject was both a nobleman and a Vice-Admiral of the Royal Navy, so the memoir touches on two realms at once: the life of an English aristocratic family and a naval career. Written by a family descendant, the narrative carries an intimate perspective and the flavor of family memory; its material comes largely from personal experience and family documents, which makes it warmer to read than an ordinary official biography. The Gutenberg classification DA points to British history, making the book a useful supplementary source for the history of nineteenth-century British aristocracy and the Royal Navy. The text is in the original English, in a style closer to Victorian biography, with long sentences that reward slow reading. Readers may note how the subject balanced family duty and naval office, and how the memoirist shaped the image of an elder family member; these two points are what distinguish the book from an ordinary biography of a naval commander.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and opening first, and clarify the two threads—the subject's family relations and naval career—before going deeper
  2. Prepare a brief chart of nineteenth-century Royal Navy ranks and aristocratic lineage to consult as you read
  3. Victorian sentences are long; read a fixed amount slowly each day rather than rushing through
  4. After each chapter, review the author's standpoint as a family descendant and note the emotional slant

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
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  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45

FAQ

What was the subject's status? The subject, Charles Philip Yorke, was the Fourth Earl of Hardwicke and also a Vice-Admiral of the Royal Navy. The memoir therefore has two threads, aristocratic family life and a naval career, and readers can see where nineteenth-century British aristocracy and the naval system intersected.
What is the author's relationship to the subject? The author, Elizabeth Philippa Biddulph, was a descendant of the subject's family and wrote this memoir from an intimate perspective. The book thus carries a clear sense of family memory and emotion, and its standpoint is that of the family circle rather than a neutral outside researcher, which is worth bearing in mind while reading.
What if the original English is hard to read? The style is closer to Victorian biography, with long sentences. Slow down and read paragraph by paragraph, grasping the main structure before working through modifiers; note family titles and naval ranks as you go and look them up after finishing a chapter, so as not to interrupt the reading rhythm too often.
Is it suitable as a main reference for Royal Navy history? It is better as supplementary material. It is a memoir written by a family descendant, focused on a life and family memory rather than systematic analysis of naval strategy or tactics. For naval history it should be used alongside specialist works, as a reference for a personal portrait and the atmosphere of the period.

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About the author

Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness, 1834-1916 Author · British · 1834–1916

Elizabeth Philippa Biddulph, Baroness (1834–1916), was a British aristocratic woman writer and a daughter of the Earl of Hardwicke. Public information about her life is limited; what is known is that she came from a British noble family and is remembered for her writing. One work by her is held in this collection: Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir, a biography of her father, Charles Philip Yorke, the fourth Earl of Hardwicke. Written from a family perspective and drawing on family memory and private papers, the book is dignified and restrained in tone, combining the intimacy of a relative with the orderliness of historical narrative. Family biographies by aristocratic women of this kind preserve details of British naval and political figures and reflect the involvement of upper-class women in nineteenth-century life-writing and commemoration, making the work useful for the study of the Earl of Hardwicke and his era.