Book details
  • Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World See large image

    Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World (Hardback) By (author) Richard O'Neill

    Free worldwide delivery

    $28.57 - Save $3.22 (10%) - RRP $31.79 Free delivery worldwide (to United States and
    all these other countries)     Usually dispatched within 48 hours     Add to basket | Add to wishlist |

    Short Description for Patrick O'Brian's NavyFrom the moment that "Master and Commander, " the first of O'Brian's 20 novels about the 19th century British Royal Navy was published, critics hailed his work as a masterpiece. This first full-color illustrated companion to the series is timed to benefit from the release of the Twentieth-Century Fox film adaptation starring Russell Crowe.
    Full description

Other books

Other people who viewed this bought | Other books in this category
Showing items 1 to 10 of 10

 

Full description | Reviews | Bibliographic data

Full description for Patrick O'Brian's Navy

  • From the moment that Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's sequence of novels about the 19th century naval office Jack Aubrey and his surgeon colleague Stephen Maturin, was published in 1970, critics hailed the book as a masterpiece of historical recreation. Patrick O'Brian died in 2000 not long after the publication of the twentieth novel in the series (Blue At The Mizzen) and by that time his reputation was secure. Reviewers were generous in their praise "Pure gold...O'Brian by the very scale and consistency of his achievement has gone further than just classic storytelling intertwined with high scholarship. I think that he has shown that late on in our literary silver age, authentic gold can still be mined" (The Daily Telegraph). What is so compelling about the Jack Aubrey novels is that they take the reader inside the navy of Napoleonic times and give us an incredibly vivid impression of what it must have been like to serve on board a warship in the age of fighting sail. O'Brian himself was enormously well-read in the subject and the fruits of his encyclopedic knowledge of the period leap off the page. But the books are so richly textured that it is easy to miss some subtle detail or fascinating historical fact in the process of following the plot, and this where this illustrated companion to the novels comes in. Written by an author who is both a military historian and a passionate devotee of the Aubrey-Maturin sequence, this book is a perfect accompaniment to the novels. It explains the historical background clearly and provides a wealth of information about the fighting warships of the period, the life of the serving sailor (both office and ordinary seaman), how ships were built, manned and sailed, how they actually fought one another, and the rewards that awaited a successful crew. It also relates this information back to the novels themselves to that readers can return to individual titles to explore the intricacies of O'Brian's fictional world with far greater insight. Illustrated in colour throughout with contemporary paintings and engravings, studio photography of naval artefacts, maps, diagrams and annotated drawings, Patrick O'Brian's Navy will prove the essential companion to one of the great contemporary works of historical fiction.