12mo. 36pp. With an engraved folding frontispiece. Uncut, stitched, as issued, into original publisher's powder blue wrappers. Housed in recent custom gate-fold navy cloth case. Substantial loss to wrappers. Light tide-mark to foot of frontispiece, title a trifle dusty, scattered foxing.

A remarkably rare survival, in original unsophisticated state, of an anonymous early biography of Nelson, primarily devoted to his victory at Trafalgar. Though frustratingly undated, it would appear that the present pamphlet is one of the earliest published accounts of the Battle of Trafalgar. The work reprints an extract from Admiral Richard Strachan's (1760-1828), account of his capture of enemy vessels off the coast of Cadiz, initially published in the Gazette Extraordinary on the 11th November, 1805. A printed publisher's statement to the verso of the title page reads as follows: 'This Pamphlet would have been issued from the press on Saturday last, 9th, but the delay was in order to render it more perfect, as the rumour of another Victory was circulated in all parts. We have this morning been enabled, by the publication of the Extraordinary Gazette, to finish with another happy instance of British naval superiority. There remains nothing to add here, but that the greatest care has been taken to render the dates exact, extracting the materials from the most respectable publications of the day'.

COPAC records a single copy (Cambridge); OCLC adds no further. A 'fourth edition', also presumed to have been printed in 1805, is recorded at Manchester; no further editions appear extant.