Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian, CBE (12 December 1914 – 2 January 2000; born as Richard Patrick Russ) was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centered on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen Maturin. The 20-novel series is known for its well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th century life, as well as its authentic and evocative language. A partially-finished twenty-first novel in the series was published posthumously containing facing pages of handwriting and typescript.

Biography

The widely held belief that O'Brian was born in Ireland began to unravel in 1998 when British journalists uncovered that O'Brian was in fact born in Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire and that he was the son of a physician of German descent and an English mother of Irish descent. Dean King's life of O'Brian, Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed, documents the complex personality and life of this enigmatic man of letters. From 1949 to his death, he lived at Collioure, a Catalan town in southern France, where he was buried.

Historian Nikolai Tolstoy is O'Brian's stepson through O'Brian's marriage to Mary Tolstoy, who divorced Count Dmitri Tolstoy and in July 1945 married O'Brian. In November 2004, Nikolai Tolstoy published Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, the first volume in a two-part biography of O'Brian using material from the Russ and Tolstoy families and sources including O'Brian's personal papers and library, which Tolstoy inherited on O'Brian's death.

Literary career

O'Brian published two novels, a collection of stories and several uncollected stories under his original name, Richard Patrick Russ. His first book was written at the age of 12 (and published three years later in 1930); "Hussein" was published in 1938, when he was 23. Richard Patrick Russ legally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian in August 1945. This was a bold stroke in many ways, not least because O'Brian necessarily had to abandon the reputation for quality writing he had already built up under the name Russ.

In the 1950s O'Brian wrote three books aimed at a younger age-group, The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, and The Unknown Shore, the latter two were based on events of the Anson circumnavigation of 1740–1743. Although written many years before the Aubrey–Maturin series, the literary antecedents of Aubrey and Maturin can be clearly seen in the characters of Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow.

Aubrey-Maturin series

Main article: Aubrey-Maturin series

Beginning in 1970, O'Brian began writing what turned into the twenty volume Aubrey-Maturin series of novels. The books are set in the early 19th century and describe the life and careers of Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, the ship's surgeon Dr Stephen Maturin. The books are distinguished by O'Brian's deliberate use and adaption of actual historical events, either by placing his heroes in the action without changing the outcome or using less well known events in his plots. The books are considered by critics to be a roman fleuve which can be read as one long story; the books follow Aubrey and Maturin's professional and domestic lives continuously.

Other works

As well as his historical novels, O'Brian wrote three adult mainstream novels, six story collections, and a history of the Royal Navy aimed at young readers. He also was a respected translator, responsible for more than 30 translations from the French, including Henri Charrière's Papillon into English, Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle, as well as many of Simone de Beauvoir's later works.

O'Brian also wrote detailed biographies of Sir Joseph Banks (an English naturalist who took part in Cook's first voyage) and Pablo Picasso. His biography of Picasso is a massive and comprehensive study of the artist. Picasso lived for a time in Collioure, the same French village as O'Brian, and the two came to be acquainted there.

Peter Weir's 2003 film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is loosely based on the novel The Far Side of the World from the Aubrey–Maturin series for its plot, but draws on a number of the novels for incidents within the film.

Mary's love and support were critical to O'Brian throughout his career. She worked with him in the British Library in the 1940s as he collected source material for his anthology "A Book of Voyages", which became the first book to bear his new name--the book was among his favorites, because of this close collaboration. He claimed that he wrote "like a Christian, with ink and quill"; Mary was his first reader and typed his manuscripts "pretty" for the publisher. Her death in March of 1998 was a tremendous blow to O'Brian and in the last two years of his life, particularly once the purported details of his early life were revealed to the world, he was a "lonely, tortured, and at the last possibly paranoid figure." (Tolstoy 2004; xi).

Trivia

In 2003 a previously nondescript species of Costa Rican palm weevil was described and named Daisya obriani after Patrick O'Brian by Dr Robert S. Anderson of the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Original manuscripts

O'Brian wrote all of his books and stories by hand, shunning both typewriter and word processor. The handwritten manuscripts for 18 of the Aubrey-Maturin novels have been acquired by the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Only two--"The Letter of Marque" and "Blue at the Mizzen" remain in private hands. The O'Brian manuscript collection at the Lilly Library also includes the manuscripts for "Picasso" and "Joseph Banks" and detailed notes for six of the Aubrey/Maturin novels.

Nikolai Tolstoy also possesses an extensive collection of O'Brian manuscript material, including the second half of "Hussein", several short stories, much of the reportedly "lost" book on Bestiaries, letters, diaries, journals, notes, poems, book reviews, and several unpublished short stories (Tolstoy, various pages).

Biographies

Since his death, there have been two biographies published, though the first was well advanced when he died. The second is the first volume of a planned two volume biography by O'Brian's stepson.

• Dean H. King (2001). Patrick O'Brian - A life revealed. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. ISBN 0-340-79256-6. 
• Dean H. King (2001). In Search of Patrick O'Brian. Holt (Henry) & Co ,U.S.. ISBN 0-8050-5977-6.  (US edition of the above book)
• Nikolai Tolstoy (2004). Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist. Century. ISBN 0-7126-7025-4. 
• Nikolai Tolstoy (2005). Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist 1914-1949. W W Norton & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-393-06130-2.  (US edition of the above book)

Also of importance when studying O'Brian:

• A. E. Cunningham (Editor) (1994). Patrick O'Brian: Critical appreciations and a bibliography. British Library. ISBN 0-7123-1071-1. 

Bibliography

The Aubrey–Maturin series

Main article: Aubrey–Maturin series

• Master and Commander (1969)
• Post Captain (1972)
• HMS Surprise (1973)
• The Mauritius Command (1977)
• Desolation Island (1978)
• The Fortune of War (1979)
• The Surgeon's Mate (1980)
• The Ionian Mission (1981)
• Treason's Harbour (1983)
• The Far Side of the World (1984)
• The Reverse of the Medal (1986)
• The Letter of Marque (1988)
• The Thirteen-Gun Salute (1989)
• The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)
• Clarissa Oakes (1992)
  (The Truelove in the USA)
• The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)
• The Commodore (1994)
• The Yellow Admiral (1996)
• The Hundred Days (1998)
• Blue at the Mizzen (1999)
• The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004)
  (21 in the USA)

Fiction (non-serial)

• Caesar (1930, his first book, which led him to be often labelled by critics as the 'boy-Thoreau')
• Hussein (1938)
• Testimonies (1952) (Three Bear Witness in the U.K.)
• The Catalans (1953) (The Frozen Flame in the U.K.)
• The Road to Samarcand (1954)
• The Golden Ocean (1956)
• The Unknown Shore (1959)
• Richard Temple (1962)

Short story collections

• Beasts Royal (1934)
• The Last Pool and Other Stories (1950)
• The Walker and Other Stories (1955)
• Lying in the Sun and Other Stories (1956)
• The Chian Wine and Other Stories (1974)
• Collected Short Stories (1994; The Rendezvous and Other Stories in the U.S.)

Non-fiction

• Men-of-War: Life in Nelson's Navy (1974). ISBN 0-393-03858-0
• Picasso (1976; originally titled Pablo Ruiz Picasso). ISBN 0-00-717357-1
• Joseph Banks: A Life (1987) The Harvill Press, London. Paperback reprint, 1989. ISBN 1-86046-406-8

See also

• Lord Cochrane "the sea wolf" (1775-1860)

External links

• A Gunroom guide to Patrick O'Brian Web Resources - comprehensive annotated link list
• Patrick O'Brian Home Page - introduction to the author and his books, by his US publisher.
• WikiPOBia - wiki to annotate the written works of Patrick O'Brian.
• Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project - A Google Maps mashup project to map all 21 books in the Aubrey–Maturin series.

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