Patrick O’Brian Books In Order

Aubrey/Maturin Books In Publication Order

  1. Master and Commander (1969)
  2. Post Captain (1972)
  3. H.M.S. Surprise (1973)
  4. The Mauritius Command (1977)
  5. Desolation Island (1977)
  6. The Fortune of War (1978)
  7. The Surgeon’s Mate (1980)
  8. The Ionian Mission (1981)
  9. Treason’s Harbour (1983)
  10. The Far Side of the World (1984)
  11. The Reverse of the Medal (1986)
  12. The Letter of Marque (1988)
  13. The Thirteen-Gun Salute (1989)
  14. The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)
  15. The Truelove / Clarissa Oakes (1992)
  16. The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)
  17. The Commodore (1994)
  18. The Yellow Admiral (1996)
  19. The Hundred Days (1998)
  20. Blue at the Mizzen (1999)
  21. 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Caesar (1930)
  2. Hussein (1938)
  3. Testimonies (1952)
  4. The Catalans (1953)
  5. The Road to Samarcand (1954)
  6. The Golden Ocean (1956)
  7. The Unknown Shore (1959)
  8. Richard Temple (1962)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Chian Wine (1974)
  2. The Rendezvous and Other Stories (1994)
  3. Collected Short Stories (1995)
  4. No Pirates Nowadays and Other Stories: Three Nautical Tales (2014)
  5. Beasts Royal: Twelve Tales of Adventure (2015)
  6. The Uncertain Land and Other Poems (2019)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Men-of-War (1974)
  2. Picasso (1976)
  3. Joseph Banks (1987)

Aubrey/Maturin Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Patrick O’Brian Books Overview

Master and Commander

An attractive movie tie in jacket for the release of the motion picture Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World starring Russell Crowe: ‘The best sea story I have ever read.’ Sir Francis Chichester This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship’s surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man of war are faultless rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle. It is the dawn of the nineteenth century; Britain is at war with Napoleon’s France. When Jack Aubrey, a young lieutenant in Nelson’s navy, is promoted to captain, he inherits command of HMS Sophie, an old, slow brig unlikely to make his fortune. But Captain Aubrey is a brave and gifted seaman, his thirst for adventure and victory immense. With the aid of his friend Stephen Maturin, ship’s surgeon and secret intelligence agent, Aubrey and his crew engage in one thrilling battle after another, their journey culminating in a stunning clash with a mighty Spanish frigate against whose guns and manpower the tiny Sophie is hopelessly outmatched.

Post Captain

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the second book in the series. Patrick O’Brian is regarded by many as the greatest historical novelist now writing. Post Captain, the second novel in his remarkable Aubrey/Maturin series, led Mary Renault to write: ‘Master and Commander raised dangerously high expectations; Post Captain triumphantly surpas*ses them.’ This tale begins with Jack Aubrey arriving home from his exploits in the Mediterranean to find England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. He and his friend Stephen Maturin, surgeon and secret agent, begin to live the lives of country gentlemen, hunting, entertaining and enjoying more amorous adventures. Their comfortable existence, however, is cut short when Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper with enough debts to keep him in prison for life. He flees to the continent to seek refuge: instead he finds himself a hunted fugitive as Napoleon has ordered the internment of all Englishmen in France. Aubrey’s adventures in escaping from France and the debtors’ prison will grip the reader as fast as his unequalled actions at sea.

H.M.S. Surprise

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are being re issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets to coincide with a new film based on the adventures and to introduce these modern classics to a new generation. H.M.S. Surprise follows the variable fortunes of Captain Jack Aubrey’s career in Nelson’s navy as he attempts to hold his ground against admirals, colleagues and the enemy, accepting a mission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage takes him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian sub continent, and through the archipelago of spice islands where the French have a near overwhelming superiority. Rarely has a novel managed to convey more vividly the fragility of a sailing ship in a wild sea. Rarely has a historical novelist combined action and lyricism of style in the way that O’ Brian does. His superb sense of place, brilliant characterisation, and a vigour and joy of writing lift O’Brian above any but the most exalted of comparisons.

The Mauritius Command

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the fourth book in the series. Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half pay without a command until his friend, and occasional intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope, under a Commodore’s pennant. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains Lord Clonfert, a pleasure seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity can push his crews to the verge of mutiny. Based on the actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean, O’Brian’s attention to detail of eighteenth century life ashore and at sea is meticulous. This tale is as beautifully written and as gripping as any in the series; it also stands on its own as a superlative work of fiction.

Desolation Island

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the fifth book in the series. Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon, Stephen Maturin, sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy and a treacherous disease which decimates the crew. The ingredients of a wonderfully powerful and dramatic O’Brian novel are heightened by descriptive writing of rare quality. Nowhere in contemporary prose have the majesty and terror of the sea been more effectively rendered than in the thrilling chase through an Antarctic storm in which Jack’s ship, under manned and out gunned, is the quarry not the hunter.

The Fortune of War

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are being re issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets to coincide with a new film based on the adventures and to introduce these modern classics to a new generation. Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best armed frigate in the Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a despatch vessel. But the war of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen’s past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content This time it’s the War of 1812 that gets in the way of Captain Jack Aubery’s plans. Caught en route to England in a dispatch vessel, Aubrey and Maturin are soon in the thick of a typically bloody naval engagement. Next stop: an American prison, from which only Maturin’s cunning allows them to engineer an exit.

The Surgeon’s Mate

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the seventh book in the series. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing. The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O’Brian has written. Then, among other things, follows a shipwreck and a particularly sinister internment in the notorious Temple Prison in Paris. Once again, the tigerish and fascinating Diana Villiers redresses the balance in this man’s world of seamanship and war.

The Ionian Mission

‘O’Brian is one author who can put a spark of character into the sawdust of time, and The Ionian Mission is another rattling good yarn.’ Stephen Vaughan, The ObserverJack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans now of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But Jack is now a senior captain commanding a line of battle ship in the Royal Navy’s blockade of Toulon, and this is a longer, harder, colder war than the dashing frigate actions of his early days. A sudden turn of events takes him and Stephen off on a hazardous mission to the Greek Islands, where all his old skills of seamanship and his proverbial luck when fighting against odds come triumphantly into their own.

Treason’s Harbour

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the ninth book in the series. Uniquely among authors of naval fiction, Patrick O’Brian allows his characters to develop with experience. The Jack Aubrey of Treason’s Harbour has a record of successes equal to that of the most brilliant of Nelson’s band of brothers, and he is no less formidable or decisive in action or strategy. But he is wiser, kinder, gentler too. Much of the plot of Treason’s Harbour depends on intelligence and counter intelligence, a field in which Aubrey’s friend Stephen Maturin excels. Through him we get a clearer insight into the life and habits of the sea officers of Nelson’s time than we would ever obtain seeing things through their own eyes. There is plenty of action and excitement in this novel, but it is the atmosphere of a Malta crowded with senior officers waiting for news of what the French are up to, and wondering whether the war will end before their turn comes for prize money and for fame, that is here so freshly and vividly conveyed.

The Far Side of the World

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are being re issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets to coincide with a new film based on the adventures and to introduce these modern classics to a new generation. It is still the War of 1812. Patrick O’Brian takes his hero Jack Aubrey and his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin on a voyage as fascinating as anything he has ever written. They set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them. It is a commission after Jack’s own heart. Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence. Aubrey has to cope with a succession of disasters men overboard, castaways, encounters with savages, storms, typhoons, groundings, shipwrecks, to say nothing of murder and criminal insanity. That the enemy is in fact faithfully dealt with, no one who has the honour of Captain Aubrey’s acquaintance can take leave to doubt. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content Captain Jack Aubrey sets sail for Cape Horn, determined to intercept an American frigate before it can wreak havoc on the British whaling trade. As always, he is accompanied by intelligence operative Stephen Maturin, and as always, Aubrey has no idea of what his companion is up to. Another impeccably written adventure, by the end of which you should be able to identify a mizzen topsail in your sleep.

The Reverse of the Medal

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the eleventh book in the series. The Reverse of the Medal is in all respects an unconventional naval tale. Jack Aubrey returns from his duties protecting whalers off South America and is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make investments in the City on the strength of supposedly certain information. From there he is led into the half worlds of the London criminal underground and of government espionage the province of his friend, Stephen Maturin, on whom alone he can rely. Those who are already devoted readers of Patrick O’Brian will find here all the brilliance of characterisation and sparkle of dialogue which they have come to expect. For those who read him for the first time there will be the pleasure of discovering, quite unexpectedly, a novelist of unique character.

The Letter of Marque

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the twelfth book in the series. Jack Aubrey is a naval officer, a post captain of experience and capacity. When The Letter of Marque opens he has been struck off the Navy List for a crime he has not committed. With Aubrey is his friend and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also an unofficial British intelligence agent. Maturin has bought for Aubrey his old ship the Surprise, so that the misery of ejection from the service can be palliated by the command of what Aubrey calls a ‘private man of war’ a letter of marque, a privateer. Together they sail on a voyage which, if successful, might restore Aubrey to the rank, and the raison d’etre, whose loss he so much regrets. Around these simple, ostensibly familar elements Patrick O’Brian has written a novel of great narrative power, exploring his extraordinary world once more, in a tale full of human feeling and rarely matched in its drama.

The Thirteen-Gun Salute

The 13th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Captain Jack Aubrey sets sail for the South China Sea with a new lease on life. Following his dismissal from the Royal Navy on a false accusation, he has earned reinstatement through his daring exploits as a privateer, brilliantly chronicled in The Letter of Marque. Now he is to shepherd Stephen Maturin his friend, ship’s surgeon and sometimes intelligence agent on a diplomatic mission to prevent between Bonaparte and the Malay princes which would put English merchant shipping at risk. The journey of the Diane encompas*ses a great and satisfying diversity of adventures. Maturin climbs the Thousand Steps of the sacred crater of the orangutans; a killer typhoon catches Aubrey and his crew trying to work the Diane off a reef; and in the barbaric court of Pulo Prabang a classic duel of intelligence agents unfolds: the French envoys, well entrenched in the Sultan s good graces, against the savage cunning of Stephen Maturin. O Brian infuses his novels with so much energy, texture and drollery that it s easy to be swept along for the voyage. Add to this the superb reading of actor Tim Pigott Smith and you have something approaching audiobook heaven. The Express Times

The Nutmeg of Consolation

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the fourteenth book in the series. Patrick O’Brian is regarded by many as the greatest living historical novelist writing in English. In The Nutmeg of Consolation, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin begin stranded on an uninhabited island in the Dutch East Indies, attacked by ferocious Malay pirates. They contrive their escape, but after a stay in Batavia and a change of ship, they are caught up in a night chase in the fiercely tidal waters and then embroiled in the much more insidious conflicts of the terrifying penal settlements of New South Wales. It is one of O’Brian’s most accomplished and gripping books.

The Truelove / Clarissa Oakes

Read by Tim Pigott Smith3 cassettes approx. 5 hoursThe 15th installment in the AubreyMaturin series. This splendid installment in Patrick O’Brian’s widely acclaimed series of AubreyMaturin novels is in equal parts mystery, adventure, and psychological drama. A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the Friendly Isles Tonga at French instigation, and Captain Aubrey, R.N., is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But stowed away in the cabletier is an escaped female convict. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies. Aubrey himself is won over and indeed strongly attracted to this woman who will not speak of her past. But only Aubrey’s friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, can fathom Clarissa’s secrets: her crime, her personality, and a clue identifying a hightly placed English spy in the pay of Napoleon’s intelligence service. In a thrilling finale, Patrick O’Brian delivers all the excitement his many readers expect: Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise impose a brutal pax Britannica on the islanders in a pitched battle against a band of headhunting cannibals.

The Wine-Dark Sea

The sixteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series, and Patrick O’Brian’s first bestseller in the United States. At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue an American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean reminds Stephen of Homer’s famous description, and portends an underwater volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader’s imagination. Their ship, the Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic complications from Stephen’s mission, which is to ignite the revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate open boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son; Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick O’Brian’s brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a breathtaking chase through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted.

The Commodore

The seventeenth novel in the best selling Aubrey/Maturin series of naval tales, which the New York Times Book Review has described as ‘the best historical novels ever written.’Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes. Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey’s seamanship and Maturin’s resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent. The subtle interweaving of these disparate themes is an achievement of pure storytelling by one of our greatest living novelists.

The Yellow Admiral

‘There are those already planning this afternoon’s trip to the bookstore. Their only reaction is: Thank god, Patrick O’Brian is still writing. To you, I say, not a moment to lose.’ John Balzar, Los Angeles TimesLife ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O’Brian’s best selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the Admiralty by his erratic voting as a Member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong Navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is on even worse terms with his wife, Sophie, whose mother has ferreted out a most damaging trove of old personal letters. Even Jack’s exploits at sea turn sour: in the storm waters off Brest he captures a French privateer laden with gold and ivory, but this at the expense of missing a signal and deserting his post. Worst of all, in the spring of 1814, peace breaks out, and this feeds into Jack’s private fears for his career. Fortunately, Jack is not left to his own devices. Stephen Maturin returns from a mission in France with the news that the Chileans, to secure their independence, require a navy, and the service of English officers. Jack is savoring this apparent reprieve for his career, as well as Sophie’s forgiveness, when he receives an urgent dispatch ordering him to Gibraltar: Napoleon has escaped from Elba.

The Hundred Days

‘One of the best novelists since Jane Austen…
. The Hundred Days may be the best installment yet…
.I give O’Brian’s fans joy of it.’ Philadelphia InquirerNapoleon, escaped from Elba, pursues his enemies across Europe like a vengeful phoenix. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. In the Balkans, preparing a thrust northwards into Central Europe to block the Russians and Austrians, a horde of Muslim mercenaries is gathering. They are inclined toward Napoleon because of his conversion to Islam during the Egyptian campaign, but they will not move without a shipment of gold ingots from Sheik Ibn Hazm which, according to British intelligence, is on its way via camel caravan to the coast of North Africa. It is this gold that Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin must at all costs intercept. The fate of Europe hinges on their desperate mission. ‘The Hundred Days is certain to delight O’Brian’s fans, for whom happiness is an unending stream of Aubrey/Maturin books…
. It is a fine novel that stands proudly on the shelf with the others.’ Los Angeles Times

Blue at the Mizzen

The brand new Aubrey Maturin novel, the twentieth in this classic series. ‘If we had only two or three of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin series, we would count ourselves lucky; with six or seven the author would be safely among the greats of historical fiction…
This is great writing by an undiminished talent. Now on to Volume Twenty, and the liberation of Chile.’ WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE, Literary Review This is the twentieth book in Patrick O’Brian’s highly acclaimed, bestselling series chronicling the adventures of lucky Jack Aubrey and his best friend Stephen Maturin, part ship’s doctor, part secret agent. The novel’s stirring action follows on from that of The Hundred Days. Napoleon’s hundred days of freedom and his renewed threat to Europe have ended at Waterloo and Aubrey has finally, as the title suggests, become a blue level admiral. He and Maturin have at last set sail on their much postponed mission to Chile. Vivid with the salty tang of life at sea, O’Brian’s writing is as powerful as ever whether he writes of naval hierarchies, night actions or the most celebrated fictional friendship since that of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Blue at the Mizzen also brings alive the sights and sounds of revolutionary South America in a story as exciting as any O’Brian has written.

21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

At the time of his death, Patrick O’Brian had begun to write a novel to follow on from Blue at the Mizzen. These are the chapters he had completed of the final voyage of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin the greatest friendship of modern literature The story picks up from the end of Blue at the Mizzen when Jack Aubrey receives the news, in Chile, of his elevation to flag rank: Rear Admiral of the Blue Squadron, with orders to sail to the South Africa station. This new novel, unfinished and untitled at the time of O’Brian’s death, would have been a chronicle of that mission, and much else besides. As the novel opens, we are able to visit these friends we have followed so very far in a rare state of almost perfect felicity. Jack has seen his illegitimate son ably discharging important duties. Sophie and his daughters are with him; Brigid is with her father, she’s thriving, and Stephen is with a woman who is very dear to him. Jack, at last, is flying a rear admiral’s flag aboard a ship of the line. The chapters left on O’Brian’s death are presented here both in printed version including his corrections to the typescript and a facsimilie of his manuscript, which goes several pages beyond the end of the typescript and includes marginal notes by O’Brian. And so this great ‘roman fleuve’ comes to an end with Jack, with his ‘sacred blue flag’, sailing through fair, sweet days Stephen with his dissections and new love, Killick muttering darkly over the toasted cheese! Of course, we would rather have had the whole story; instead we have this proof that O’Brian’s powers of observation, his humour and his understanding of his characters were undiminished to the end. ‘There is nothing in this century that rivals Patrick O’Brian’s achievement in his chosen genre. His novels embrace with loving clarity the full richness of the 18th century world. They embody the cruelty of battle, the comedy of men’s lives, the uncertain fears that plague their hearts; and yet, not far away, is the vision of an ideal existence.’ Amanda Foreman, New York Times

Caesar

‘O’Brian was only 15 when Caesar was published, but he already possessed an instinct for deft plotting and uncomplicated narrative.’ The New York TimesA stark tale encompassing the cruelty and beauty of the natural world, and a clear demonstration of the storytelling gift that would later flower in the Aubrey/Maturin series. When he was fourteen years old and beset by chronic ill health, Patrick O’Brian began creating his first fictional character. ‘I did it in my bedroom, and a little when I should have been doing my homework,’ he confessed in a note on the original dust jacket. Caesar tells the picaresque, enchanting, and quite bloodthirsty story of a creature whose father is a giant panda and whose mother is a snow leopard. Through the eyes and voice of this fabulous creature, we learn of his life as a cub, his first hunting exploits, his first encounters with man, his capture and taming. Caesar was published in 1930, three months after O’Brian’s fifteenth birthday, but the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian readers savor in the Aubrey/Maturin series is already in evidence. The book combines Stephen Maturin’s fascination and encyclopedic knowledge of natural history with the narrative charm of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. It was published in England and the United States, and in translation in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Japan. Reviews hailed the author as the ‘boy Thoreau.’ ‘We can see here a true storyteller in the making…
.a gripping narrative, which holds the reader’s attention and never flags.’ The Spectator

Hussein

A glittering adventure set in India at the height of the British Raj. The New York Times compared this book to Kipling’s Kim and called it ‘a gorgeous entertainment.’Of this early work, published when he was in his early twenties, Patrick O’Brian writes in a foreword: ‘In the writing of the book I learnt the rudiments of my calling: but more than that, it opened a well of joy that has not yet run dry.’ The story is about a young mahout or elephant handler his childhood and life in India, and his relationship and adventures with elephants. As a boy, Hussein falls in love with a beautiful and elusive girl, Sashiya, and arranges for another of her suitors to be murdered with a fakir’s curse. The dead man’s relatives vow vengeance. Hussein escapes and his adventures begin: snake charming, sword fighting, spying, stealing a fortune, and returning triumphantly to claim his bride. All of this is set against an evocatively exotic India, full of bazaars, temples, and beautiful women despite the fact that O’Brian had never been to the East when he wrote the story.

Testimonies

‘A welcome reissue of O’Brian’s moving and very fine first novel.’ Kirkus ReviewsDelmore Schwartz, the most influential critic in postwar America, wrote of Patrick O’Brian’s first novel Testimonies: ‘A triumph…
drawn forward by lyric eloquence and the story’s fascination, the reader discovers in the end that he has encountered in a new way the sphinx and the riddle of existence itself.’ Schwartz’ imagination was fired by this sinister tale of love and death set in Wales, a timeless story with echoes of Thomas Hardy and Mary Webb. Joseph Pugh, sick of Oxford and of teaching, decides to take some time off to live in a wild and beautiful Welsh farm valley. There he falls physically ill and is nursed back to health by Bronwen Vaughn, the wife of a neighboring farmer. Slowly, unwillingly, Bronwen and Pugh fall in love;’ and while that word is never spoken between them, their story is as passionate and as tragic as that of Vronsky and Anna Karenina.

The Catalans

A dark story of love and betrayal set against the brilliant colors of the Catalan country in southern France.

This novel, long out of print, is a powerful successor to Testimonies, Patrick O’Brian’s first novel written for adults. It is set in that corner of France that became O’Brian’s adopted home, where the long dark wall of the Pyrenees runs headlong to meet the Mediterranean. Alan Roig returns to Saint F liu after years in the East, and finds his family in crisis. His dour, middle aged cousin Xavier, mayor and most powerful citizen of the town, has fallen in love and plans to marry the young daughter of the local grocer. The Roig family property is threatened by this union, and Madeleine’s relatives object on different grounds.

Xavier is a tragic figure, damned by what he perceives as a lack of feeling; Madeleine is to be his salvation. Unfortunately she does not return his affection, and as the feasts and harvest festivals of Saint F liu are played out, she finds herself falling in love with Alain.

The Road to Samarcand

O’Brian’s richly told adventure saga, with its muscular prose, supple dialogue and engaging characters, packs a nice old school punch.’ Publishers Weekly

This story begins where Patrick O’Brian’s devoted fans would want it to, with a sloop in the South China Sea barely surviving a killer typhoon. The time is the 1930s and the protagonist a teenaged American boy whose missionary parents have just died. In the company of his rough seafaring uncle and an elderly English cousin, an eminent archaeologist, Derrick sets off in search of ancient treasures in central Asia.

Along the way they encounter a charismatic Chinese bandit and a host of bad characters, including Russian agents fomenting unrest. The narrative touches on surprising subjects: astronomy, oriental philosophy, the correct identification of ancient Han bronzes, and some very local cuisine. It ends in an ice bound valley, with the party caught between hostile Red Hat monks and the Great Silent Ones, the Tibetan designation for the yeti.

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The Golden Ocean

The first novel Patrick O’Brian ever wrote about the sea, a precursor to the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series. In the year 1740, Commodore later Admiral George Anson embarked on a voyage that would become one of the most famous exploits in British naval history. Sailing through poorly charted waters, Anson and his men encountered disaster, disease, and astonishing success. They circumnavigated the globe and seized a nearly incalcuable sum of Spanish gold and silver, but only one of the five ships survived. This is the background to the first novel Patrick O’Brian ever wrote about the sea, a precursor to the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series that shares the excitement and rich humor of those books. The protagonist is Peter Palafox, son of a poor Irish parson, who signs on as a midshipman, never before having seen a ship. Together with his lifelong friend Sean, Peter sets out to seek his fortune, embarking upon a journey of danger, disappointment, foreign lands, and excitement. Here is a tale certain to please not only admirers of O’Brian’s work but also any reader with an adventurous soul. ‘In the present case the names were provided for me, together with the whole sequence of events, just as they were for Homer, Virgil, and many others…
.I was fortunate enough to have great material, and I wrote the book in about six weeks or was it less?, laughing most of the time.’ Patrick O’Brian on the writing of The Golden Ocean

The Unknown Shore

An immediate precursor to Patrick O’Brian’s acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series, displaying all the splendid prose and attention to detail that O’Brian’s readers expect. Patrick O’Brian’s first novel about the sea, The Golden Ocean, took inspiration from Commodore George Anson’s fateful circumnavigation of the globe in 1740. In The Unknown Shore, O’Brian returns to this rich source and mines it brilliantly for another, quite different tale of exploration and adventure. The Wager was parted from Anson’s squadron in the fierce storms off Cape Horn and struggled alone up the coast of Chile until she was driven against the rocks and sank. The survivors were soon involved in trouble of every kind. A surplus of rum, a disappearing stock of food, and a hard, detested captain soon drove them into drunkenness, mutiny, and bloodshed. After many months of privation, a handful of men made their way northward under the guidance of a band of Indians, at last finding safety in Valparaiso. This saga of survival is the background to the adventures of two young men aboard the Wager: midshipman Jack Byron and his friend Tobias Barrow, an alarmingly naive surgeon’s mate. Patrick O’Brian’s many devoted readers will take particular interest in this story, as Jack and Toby form a kind of blueprint for Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the famed heroes of the great Aubrey/Maturin series to come.

Richard Temple

Available for the first time in the United States a tale of art and espionage during World War II by the best selling author of the Aubrey Maturin series.

The eponymous protagonist of this novel is a prisoner of the German army in France; but as we soon discover, he is nobody’s idea of a hero. In order to keep himself sane while denying the charges and absorbing the beatings of his captors, Richard Temple conducts a minute examination one might almost call it a prosecution of his own life.

Temple escapes from a blighted childhood and his widowed, alcoholic mother thanks to an artistic gift, which is the one thing of value he has to his name. His life as a painter in London of the 1930s is cruelly deprived. In order to eat, he squanders his one asset by becoming a forger of art, specializing in minor works by Utrillo. He is rescued by the love of a beautiful and wealthy woman, and it is the failure of this relationship, coupled with the outbreak of war, that propels him into the world of espionage.

The Rendezvous and Other Stories

A collection of startlingly vivid short stories from Patrick O’Brian, author of the highly acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series. Patrick O’Brian has emerged, in the opinion of many, as one of the greatest novelists now writing in English. His fame rests mainly on the achievement of the epic Aubrey/Maturin novels, but few readers know that O’Brian first made his reputation as a writer of short fiction. Collected here for the first time are twenty seven stories that O’Brian wishes to preserve: stories of uncommon lyricism and beauty that will confirm his rightful place in the front rank of short story writers as well as of novelists. Although the tone of this collection ranges effortlessly from the humorous to the dramatic, the most characteristic and memorable stories often have to do with a glimpse of savage, destructive forces through the fragile shell of human civilization. The threatened chaos may be psychological, as in ‘On the Wolfsberg,’ or it may be lurking in the natural world, as in ‘A Passage of the Frontier,’ or, as in the dark masterpiece ‘The Chian Wine,’ it is suddenly discovered in the ancient, irrational impulses of human nature. The setting may be the marshes of western Ireland, the Pyrenees, or the claustrophobic confines of a clockmender’s house, but each story is a showcase for Patrick O’Brian’s fresh and meticulous prose; each story reaffirms his sympathetic understanding of human passion and suffering. This collection proves that O’Brian is not simply the master of a genre, but an author who will long be honored as one of our most eminent literary figures.

Collected Short Stories

This collection of short stories are about country life and the open air and were first published in the 1950s. Patrick O’Brian is the author of ‘Clarissa Oakes’, ‘The Wine Dark Sea’ and ‘Testimonies’.

Men-of-War

The author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin historical sea novels presents a concise, profusely illustrated description of daily life in Nelson’s navy, including anecdotes about the battles and commanders that established Britain’s naval supremacy.

Picasso

‘The best biography of Picasso.’ Kenneth ClarkPatrick O’Brian’s outstanding biography of Picasso is here available in paperback for the first time. It is the most comprehensive yet written, and the only biography fully to appreciate the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso‘s character and art. Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. No painter of the first rank has been so awe inspiringly productive. No painter of any rank has made so much money. A few painters have rivaled his life span of ninety years, but none has attracted so avid, so insatiable, a public interest. Patrick O’Brian knew Picasso sufficiently well to have a strong sense of his personality. The man that emerges from this scholarly, passionate, and brilliantly written biography is one of many contradictions: hard and tender, mean and generous, affectionate and cold, private despite the relish of his fame. In his later years he professed communism, yet in O’Brian’s view retained to the end of his life a residual Catholic outlook. Not that such matters were allowed to interfere with his vigorous sensuality. Sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedies and tragedies, suicides and wars tumble one another in the vast chaos of his experience. he was ‘a man almost as lonely as the sun, but one who glowed with much the same fierce, burning life.’ It is with that impression of its subject that this book leaves its readers.

Joseph Banks

One of our greatest writers about the sea has written an engrossing story of one of history’s most legendary maritime explorers. Patrick O’Brian’s biography of naturalist, explorer and co founder of Australia, Joseph Banks, is narrative history at its finest. Published to rave reviews, it reveals Banks to be a man of enduring importance, and establishes itself as a classic of exploration.’It is in his description of that arduous three year voyage on the ship Endeavor that Mr. O’Brian is at his most brilliant…
. He makes us understand what life within this wooden world was like, with its 94 male souls, two dogs, a cat and a goat.’ Linda Colley, New York Times’An absorbing, finely written overview, meant for the general reader, of a major figure in the history of natural science.’ Frank Stewart, Los Angeles Times’ This book is the definitive biography of an extraordinary subject.’ Robert Taylor, Boston Globe’His skill at narrative and his extensive knowledge of the maritime history…
give him a definite leg up in telling this…
story.’ Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle

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