Publication
W. W. Norton & Company (2004), 6576 p.
Original publication date
1970
Collections
Subjects
Description
Sumptuous boxed gift edition of five omnibus hardbacks containing all 21 novels in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Patrick O'Brian's twenty-one-volume Aubrey/Maturin series of nautical adventures set during the Napoleonic War has delighted generations of devoted fans, inspired a blockbuster film, and sold millions of copies in twenty-four languages. These five omnibus volumes, beautifully produced and boxed, contain 7,000 pages of what has often been described as a single, continuous narrative. They are a perfect tribute for such a literary achievement, and a perfect gift for the O'Brian enthusiast.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Arbitrex
I have no idea how I got started on this series, as I never had any previous interest in naval stories, or that time period. Patrick's writing is so good however that it didn't matter - somehow he writes in such a way that despite using the vernacular of the time and indecipherable sea terminology
Show More
- somehow it is all so absorbing that you still understand nearly completely. The sea stories and their roots in real history are phenomenal, but really the soul of this series is about a friendship between two of the most interesting, deepest characters I have ever read about. It was heart-rending for me to reach the unfinished book 21, and to know that Patrick's work and these characters will never be finished. If Tolkien defined the reading of my youth, O'Brian I think defines my adult reading. Minor note - the boxed set is notorious for spelling errors and some poor formatting, for those sensitive to that. It is however an inexpensive way of acquiring all the novels rather than singly -'the lesser of two weevils', as Aubrey might say. Show Less
LibraryThing member howardpa
Listening to these read as I drove back and forth weekly (3 hrs one way) to San Jose, kept me awake for many years. Beautiful evocative language and robust multi-dimensional characters.
LibraryThing member ElTomaso
What an exciting series of ten novels about the age of sail, during a time when Europe erupted repeated in war as Bonaparte and other leaders across the continent and around the world attempted to dominate one another. This 10 book series was like a valued friend to me for almost a year, and I was
Show More
quite sad to finish the last book, it was as though that friend had died! Show Less
LibraryThing member samgb
Absolutely loved them all. Tremendous evocation of period and engaging characters. To some extent the law of diminishing returns applies and the later books are slightly lesser works but if you are anything like me if you like one you will probably have to read them all!
LibraryThing member lxydis
Absolutely wonderful. Jack and Stephen are among the most delighful characters ever written.
In my view,however, DO NOT read the last, unfinished novel...just end the series with #20 on a happy note!
In my view,however, DO NOT read the last, unfinished novel...just end the series with #20 on a happy note!
LibraryThing member flashflood42
The single best series I have ever heard, read via audible.com by Simon Vance. I began with Desolation Island (where I had stopped years ago) went to the very end then began again.
Media reviews
London Review of Books
Most historical novels suffer from the fatal twin defects of emphasizing the pastness of the past too much while at the same time seeking to be overfamiliar with it ("Have some more of this Chian," drawled Alcibiades). O'Brian does neither. Indeed "history" as such does not seem greatly to interest
Show More
him: his originality consists in the unpretentious use he makes of it to invent a new style of fiction. That unpretentiousness has become a rare asset among novelists. The reader today has become conditioned, partly by academic critics, to look in Melville and Conrad for the larger issues and deeper significances, rather than enjoying the play of life, the humor and detail of the performance. Yet surface is what matters in good fiction, and Melville on the whale and on the Pequod's crew is more absorbing to his readers in the long run than is the parabolic significance of Captain Ahab. Patrick O'Brian has contrived to invent a new world that is almost entirely in this sense a world of enchanting fictional surfaces, and all the better for it. Show Less
The New York Review of Books
O’Brian avoids anything too lurid or graphic, but he takes the facts of life very much as they come, and these narratives are salted, as one might say, with illustrative incidents of every sort of carnality (including the bestial, since animals had to be shipped for milk and protein) and also of
Show More
the gross reality of attending to bodily functions in a confined and hazardous space. We are spared neither the scent of the bordello, nor the pox-ridden customers of the ship’s surgeon, nor the reek of the head and the privy. As for rum, we come to appreciate how shrewd were the severe British Sea Lords who mandated a stunning daily draft of it as the only indulgence permitted afloat...
It is Maturin who makes all the difference here. For a sidekick, Hornblower had only the dogged Mr Bush, a character of John Bullish stoicism. Jack Aubrey ships out with the Georgian equivalent of a Straussian intellectual, a man of many parts but with a good many of them hidden. To Jack he shows his command of medicine and natural history and the classics, but beneath the waterline he is also an intelligence expert familiar with complex codes, and a closet revolutionary. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9780393060119
Physical description
6576 p.; 8.3 x 5.5 inches
Pages
6576