Patrick O'Brian

In H.M.S. Surprise, British naval officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin face near-death and tumultuous romance in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Tasked with ferrying a British ambassador to the Sultan of Kampong, they find themselves on a prolonged voyage aboard a Royal Navy frigate en route to the Malay Peninsula. In this new sphere, Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy who enjoys overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could secure him a marriage to his beloved Sophie and make him rich beyond his wildest dreams: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet.

Botanist, explorer, President of the Royal Society and one of Australia’s founding fathers. Sir Joseph Banks was among the most influential figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a young man he accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage of discovery to Australia, in later years he was instrumental in establishing Kew Gardens as the greatest botanical centre in the world and he knew just about everybody who mattered in the scientific circles of the time. Patrick O'Brian's masterly biography draws on much hitherto unpublished material. Far from being the colossus of science traditionally imagined, Joseph Banks emerges here as a warm-hearted enthusiast whose legacy survives not only in the record of his botanizing in the South Seas but in the development of the Australian continent and in the tenor and tradition of subsequent scientific inquiry.

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

The life of the world’s greatest modern artist by one of Britain’s greatest artists. 'Positive, original, diverting and highly effective.’ – Sunday Times ‘This biography achieves that rare distinction of never having a dull page.’ – Independent on Sunday Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. His appetitel for sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedy and tragedy, are legendary. No artist of the first rank has been so aw-inspiringly productive. No artist of any rank has made so much money. A few artists have rivalled his life-span of ninety years, but none has attracted so insatiable a public interest. Patrick O’Brian, author of the famous Aubrey-Maturin novels, was a near neighbour of Picasso’s in the south of France for many years and knew him well. His much admired biography gives full weight to hte distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso’s character and art. The man that emerges from teh pages of this scholarly and passionate biography is one of many contradictions: hard and tender, mean and generous, affectionate and cold, private despite his relish of fame. A man who, despite the professed communism of his later years, in O’Brian’s view, retained to the end of his life a residual Catholic mentality.

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."

This is the story of a young mahout - or elephant handler - his childhood and life in India and his relationship and adventures with elephants.

The seventeenth in the best-selling series of naval tales finds Aubrey and Maturin returning to England and their families, but ultimately sent to Ireland where their seamanship and intelligence skills are put to the test. 100,000 first printing. Tour.

Third in the series of Aubrey-Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet...

This special hardback edition celebrates the 50th anniversary of first publication with a brand-new foreword by O’Brian’s stepson and biographer, Nikolai Tolstoy, and artist’s note by Geoff Hunt, and includes the complete text of the previously unavailable Men-of-War, O’Brian’s fascinating guide to the world of Aubrey/Maturin. Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship’s surgeon and an intelligence agent. It contains all the action and excitement which could possibly be hoped for in a historical novel, but it also displays the qualities which have put O’Brian far ahead of any of his competitors: his depiction of the detail of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weapons, food, conversation and ambience, of the landscape and of the sea. O’Brian’s portrayal of each of these is faultless and the sense of period throughout is acute. His power of characterisation is above all masterly. This brilliant historical novel marked the début of a writer who has grown into one of the most remarkable literary novelists now writing, the author of what Alan Judd, writing in the Sunday Times, has described as ‘the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time’.

Patrick O'Brian's Blue at the Mizzen--novel #20 in the widely celebrated Aubrey/Maturin series--ended with Jack Aubrey getting 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. The next novel, unfinished and untitled at the time of the author's death, would have been the chronicle of that mission, and much else besides. The three chapters left on O'Brian's desk are presented here both in printed version--including his corrections to the typescript--and a facsimile of his manuscript, which goes several pages beyond the end of the typescript to include a duel between Stephen Maturin and an impertinent officer who is courting his fianc e. These chapters show that O'Brian's powers of observation, his humor, and his understanding of his characters were undiminished to the end.

Set amongst the rolling vineyards and gentle courtyards of a small seaside village in Catalonia, Patrick O'Brian's second novel is a poignant story of tumultuous love, complex faith and one man's desperate bid to reclaim his humanity. Summoned from his medical practice in China by a bevy of anxious aunts, Alain Roig returns to his Catalan hometown to discover he has been nominated by family members with vested interests in the ancestral property to prevent an impending marriage between his cold, ascetic cousin Xavier and Madeleine, a quiet, introspective village girl of unusual beauty. As Alain seeks to understand his cousin's complex motivations for wooing the unhappy girl, he is slowly drawn into Xavier's dark crisis of faith, the well-worn pattern of the sleepy Catalan days and the tight circle of village gossip that surrounds Madeleine. Throughout, Patrick O'Brian's slow, seductive narrative lures the reader into the landscapes, rhythms and passions of Catalonia, while his subtle, insightful characterisation paints a psychological portrait of a unique way of life and two very different men – one generous and impulsive, the other desperate to revive in his soul the dying flames of affection which he senses could be his salvation. With themes and characters that in many ways prefigure his enormously successful Aubrey/Maturin series, THE CATALANS demonstrates all the insight, lyricism and psychological drama that made O'Brian one of the best storytellers of his generation.

Back in print and now in hardback, the deeply personal and ingenious literary first novel written under Patrick O’Brian’s own name, newly introduced by Nikolai Tolstoy. THREE BEAR WITNESS John Aubrey Pugh, an Oxford don who has given up his teaching post and come to live in a secluded Welsh valley, falls in love with Bronwen Vaughan, the wife of a young farmer who is his neighbour. She is estranged from her husband, an admirable man in many ways, but one who has compelled her to submit to some brutal sexual perversion. When a famous preacher, whose advances Bronwen has rejected with contempt, persuades the entire community that she has committed adultery with Pugh, a reckoning is inevitable, and the ill-fated consequences of their actions are recounted in the testimonies of Bronwen, Pugh and the preacher’s cousin, Mr Lloyd. Patrick O’Brian is world famous for his novels of nautical high adventure, but twenty years before readers were first introduced to Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, he wrote this intensely felt and evocative tale set in the beautiful but often unforgivingWelsh landscape he knew so well. With all the freshness and immediacy that have become hallmarks of O’Brian’s style, he conveys the hopes and fears, and tragedy, of his characters, demonstrating the flair and sheer humanity that have made him one of the twentieth century’s literary greats. This new edition of Patrick O'Brian's first adult novel includes a new introduction by the author's biographer and stepson, Nikolai Tolstoy.

Out of print for many years, this is a brand new edition of the definitive companion to the acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series of novels, written by the author himself. What was daily life in Nelson's navy really like, for everyone from the captain down to the rawest recruit? What did they eat? What songs did they sing? What was the schedule of watches? How were the officers and crew paid, and what was the division of prize-money? These questions and many more are answered in Patrick O'Brian's elegant narrative, which includes wonderful anecdotal material on the battles and commanders that established Britain's naval supremacy. The meticulously researched text and imagery together provide an unparalleled insight into life during wartime in the Napoleonic era, and offer a wonderfully evocative companion to the world of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures. As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, readers around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic. At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller. The writer’s command of language is combined with the poet’s eye for visual detail to remarkable, and unforgettable effect. In The Uncertain Land and Other Poems, those same strengths are vividly displayed as O’Brian leads us on a journey through his own life. Here, we see a writer full of a young man’s spirit, challenging life, and here an author reflecting an old man’s melancholy at youth gone; in between, as he describes the places that he lived and people that he encountered, are poems of sly observation, wry humour and delicate beauty. Through more than 100 poems, O’Brian reveals insights into the world that captivated him while he was at work on a succession of novels that would reach its apotheosis in the Aubrey/Maturin adventures, which would secure his reputation as ‘the Homer of the Napoleonic Wars’. Intensely personal, allusive and unique, this is the work of a lifetime, published now for the very first time.