Master and Commander - Hardcover

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Patrick O’Brian, until his death in 2000, was one of our greatest contemporary novelists. He is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey–Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He is the author of many other books including Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived for many years in South West France and he died in Dublin in January 2000.

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'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 an historical novel, but it also displays the qualities which have put O'Brian so 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 debut 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'.

“ In a highly competitive field it goes straight to the top. A real first-rater.”
MARY RENAULT

“ 'Master and Commander' recreates with delightful subtlety the flavour of life aboard a midget British man-of-war, plying the western Mediterranean in the year 1800, a year of indecisive naval skirmishes with France and Spain. Even for a reader not especially interested in matters nautical, the author’s easy command of the philosophical, political, sensual and social temper of the times flavours a rich entertainment.”
MARTIN LEVIN, 'New York Times Book Review'

“Beautifully constructed… the writing is brilliantly detailed, the action unflagging.”
YORKHIRE EVENING POST

“ I never enjoyed a novel about the sea more. It is not only that the author describes the handling of a ship of 1800 with an accuracy that is as comprehensible as it is detailed, a remarkable feat in itself. Mr O’Brian’s three chief characters are drawn with no less depth of sympathy than the vessels he describes, a rare achievement save in the greatest writers of this genre. It deserves the widest readership.”
IRISH TIMES