The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

Beresford, Charles William De la Poer Beresford, BProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
112

Tags

English Originals General BiographyMilitary Military LifeNaval HistoryRoyal NavyAdmiral MemoirVictorian 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.The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford by BeresfordAuthor: Beresford, Charles William De la Poer Beresford, Baron, 1846-1919,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Nov 20, 2015

Editor's review

This is the memoir of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford of the British Navy, released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. Written in the first person, it recounts his long naval and public career, covering nineteenth-century British naval training, ships, overseas stations, and imperial expansion, and also reflects the personal networks and controversies of the military and political circles of the time. For readers familiar with modern British history and naval history, the book offers firsthand detail and personal judgment that can be read alongside formal histories to identify the stances and emotional coloring in the narrative. The text is in the original English and quite long, with a chronological narrative; it is suitable for reading as historical source material rather than light entertainment. When reading, it is helpful to consult background chronologies and annotations, pay attention to how the author evaluates events and people, and appreciate the subjectivity of the memoir genre. The electronic edition is easy to search for names and places, making it suitable for thematic excerpts and comparative research.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and chronology first, mark key postings and event nodes, then read chapter by chapter.
  2. Prepare background material on British naval history and check names of people and ships as you go.
  3. Record the author's evaluations of controversial events and colleagues in thematic excerpts.
  4. After finishing, select two or three events and cross-check them against formal histories to see differences in narrative.

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
  16. 16
  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
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers without a background in naval history? Not very. The book contains many names, ship names, and institutional terms that assume readers have a basic background in nineteenth-century British naval history; without that foundation, it is easy to get lost in the details. If you still want to read it, start with a concise overview of British naval history and prepare a chronology and list of figures as aids.
How should I judge the reliability of the memoir's narrative? Memoirs carry the author's personal stance and retrospective memory, especially when controversial matters are involved. When reading, separate the author's judgments from verifiable historical facts; for key events, consult other historical sources to compare, understand the author's narrative choices and emotional tendencies, and do not treat the whole book as a neutral record.
What practical advice is there for reading the electronic edition? You can use the search function of the electronic text to quickly locate names, places, and events and build your own index. A long historical source should not be read all at once; read it in blocks by career stage, and write a brief summary after each block for easy review and comparison.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Beresford, Charles William De la Poer Beresford, B Author · British · 1846–1919

Charles William De la Poer Beresford (1846–1919) was a British admiral and a Conservative MP who took part in the Egyptian and Sudanese wars. One work by him is held in the collection, The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford. Because public information is limited, details of his early life, education and specific wartime achievements cannot be confirmed and are not elaborated here. On the available evidence, the memoirs are a first-person account by a naval commander, recording the operations and political activities of the nineteenth-century Royal Navy from an eyewitness perspective. The book combines a narrative of personal career with period source material and is useful to those studying British naval history and late Victorian politics.