# The Saint Helena Exile *A Biography of Napoleon* — Legendary Biographies No. 195 - **Subject:** Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte) - **Written by:** Edward Forrester - **Shelf:** Power & Politics / History - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 258 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 258 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-142-0) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Theo Brackett (ISBN 979-8-90623-241-0) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/195-the-saint-helena-exile.html ## About this book May 5, 1821, the Longwood estate on the island of Saint Helena, two thousand nine hundred kilometres from the nearest Brazilian coast. Napoleon Bonaparte, fifty-one, dies of stomach cancer in the bedroom that has been his prison since October 1815. Five years and six months earlier he had surrendered to the captain of HMS Bellerophon off the coast of Rochefort. His autopsy is performed by the British physician Dr. Francesco Antommarchi. He is buried in the Sane Valley below Longwood. His body is repatriated to the Invalides in Paris on December 15, 1840. Edward Forrester's biography opens earlier — in Ajaccio, Corsica, where Napoleone Buonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, the fourth child of Carlo and Letizia (after two infants who had died and the future king of Naples Joseph) — and follows the arc through the École Royale Militaire de Brienne and the École Militaire de Paris years, the 1789 Revolution and the long Italian Campaign of 1796-97, the 1799 Brumaire coup, the long Consulate and the 1804 imperial coronation, the long 1805-1812 zenith of Austerlitz and Jena and Friedland and Wagram, the 1812 Russian disaster, the 1814 abdication and the Elba exile, the 1815 Hundred Days and Waterloo, and the long Longwood imprisonment. What emerges is a portrait of the Ajaccio-born Corsican junior officer whose fifteen years of military command redrew the political map of Europe — and the British-prison-island death the post-Vienna Congress arranged. ## Contents 1. Ajaccio, August 1769 2. Brienne and the École Militaire 3. The Corsican Years and the Break with Paoli 4. Toulon, December 1793 5. The Whiff of Grapeshot 6. Italy and Egypt 7. 18 Brumaire 8. The Code Civil 9. The Concordat and the Pope 10. The Coronation and Austerlitz 11. The Descent: A Structural Overview 12. The Spanish Ulcer 13. Marie-Louise and the King of Rome 14. Russia 15. Leipzig and the First Abdication 16. The Hundred Days 17. Saint Helena 18. May 5, 1821 and the Legend 19. The Movie ## Questions **Who is The Saint Helena Exile about?** Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Saint Helena Exile — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 2,593 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 68,500 words, 19 chapters, 258 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Edward Forrester is a Princeton-trained historian whose work for The New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement has focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — the long arc by which the modern political world was made. His detailed biographies explore how individual leaders and pivotal figures navigated the shifting tides of historical change. His published works include The Opening, The Castro Camera Storefront, The Bedroll, The Burkhan Khaldun, and The Saint Helena Exile. These volumes demonstrate his commitment to archival research and accessible historical storytelling. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spends his free time restoring antique furniture and hiking.