In this title, one of today's most innovative historians of sex and gender gives an insight into the life of an enduringly romantic figure and presents a new understanding of Emma's life with Sir William Hamilton and their extraordinary liaison with Horatio Nelson. There was to be no happy ending. After his death at Trafalgar, society exacted its revenge upon Emma's outrageous unconventionality and this combined with her own self-destructive impulses, lead to the tragic exile and decline of one of history's most alluring women.