Patrick O’Brian

1914–2000

Patrick O’Brian is one of the defining authors of naval historical fiction, especially for readers interested in seamanship, friendship, espionage and imperial warfare.

Patrick O’Brian was born Richard Patrick Russ in 1914. He began publishing fiction while still young and later adopted the name by which he became famous. After the Second World War he settled for many years in Collioure in southern France. In addition to his own novels, he translated numerous French works into English and wrote biographies of Joseph Banks and Pablo Picasso, evidence of the broad interests in science, exploration and art that entered his fiction.

O’Brian began the Aubrey–Maturin series with Master and Commander in 1969. Across twenty completed novels, naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician, naturalist and intelligence agent Stephen Maturin serve through the Napoleonic Wars. The series is celebrated for technical maritime language, but its deeper subject is the changing friendship between two very different men. Music, medicine, natural history, espionage and domestic finance accompany battles and voyages, creating an unusually complete social world. O’Brian died in 2000. His books became a benchmark for naval historical fiction because they combine documentary precision with humour, emotional restraint and a sustained understanding of how long wars reshape private lives.

Periods and events

Napoleonic Era Royal Navy in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars War of the Third Coalition War of 1812 Transportation to Australia Hundred Days / War of the Seventh Coalition Abolition Movement in Britain War of the Sixth Coalition Georgian Empire and Atlantic World Spanish American Wars of Independence Resumption of War with France

Series

Series by Patrick O’Brian (1 series)

Aubrey–Maturin Novels in Order

by Patrick O’Brian 21 books 4.5

The Aubrey–Maturin novels follow Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon, naturalist and intelligence agent Stephen Maturin from the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France through the War of 1812 and the first years after Waterloo. Across twenty completed novels, their friendship links shipboard command, espionage, science, domestic…