Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World

From Publishers Weekly
Both visually impressive and highly informative, this large-format introduction to Napoleonic naval warfare focuses on Patrick O'Brian's splendid Jack Aubrey saga, which it presents as a major work of English literature. In fact, parts of this book (including the material on Lord Cochrane, the original model for Jack Aubrey's character) will be more useful to O'Brian's fans than to the lay reader. However, the book also depicts, in words and pictures, the political background of the Napoleonic Wars, the development of the major navies, the sailors' life at sea (where weather and disease killed far more men than battles did) and the design and construction of the wooden sailing warship. The volume also details the training of officers, fleet actions, frigate actions (prominent in the career of both Cochrane and his avatar) and the role of piracy, slave trading and mutiny in the maritime history of the era. Although not uniformly well reproduced, the illustrations are outstanding, including many period items, and the book as a whole makes a fine treat O'Brian's many fans. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Book Description
From the moment that Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's sequence of 20 novels about the 19th century British Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and his surgeon colleague Stephen Maturin, was published in 1970, critics hailed his work as a masterpiece of historical recreation. Called "the best historical novels ever written" by The New York Times, the books have sold more than 3 million copies. This first full-color illustrated companion to the Aubrey-Maturin series, timed to benefit from the release of the blockbuster Twentieth-Century Fox film adaptation starring Russell Crowe, explains the fascinating physical details of Jack Aubrey's fictional world. An in-depth historical reference, it brings to life the political, cultural, and physical setting of O'Brian's novels. Annotated drawings, paintings, and diagrams reveal the complex parts of a ship and its rigging, weaponry, crew quarters and duties, below-deck conditions, and fighting tactics, while maps illustrate the location featured in each novel.


About the Author
Richard O'Neill is a writer and editor who has specialized in military history for 40 years.


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O'Neill (The Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century Warships) has produced a full-color reference book that, despite its somewhat misleading title, may turn out to be a useful purchase for followers of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. The majority of the intelligently selected period paintings and drawings come from the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, England, and the National Maritime Museum; that they are gathered under one cover is certainly a major strength of the book. In addition to the illustrations, O'Neill provides a well-researched historical account of what was going on during the Napoleonic Wars, a glossary of nautical terminology, and a "cast list" both of major fictional characters and of historical personalities encountered in the novels. For good measure, they also include throughout a series of informational boxes titled "Through Aubrey's Eyes" that provide links between the factual material and scenes and events from the O'Brian novels. Not quite as authoritative as Brian Lavery's Nelson's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1783- 1815 or as helpful as Dean King's A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales, this may be an attractive acquisition for large public libraries with an interest both in O'Brian's novels and in the iconography of sea warfare during the Napoleonic era.-Robert C. Jones, formerly with Central Missouri State Univ., Warrensburg Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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