If you love Patrick O’Brian’s
Jack Aubrey – Stephen Maturin Novels, here’s a note for your shopping list!
A much expanded 2nd
edition of the definitive O’Brian guide book will be available in Spring 2006:
(McFarland & Co.:
Here’s the details of the First Edition, still available
for sale:
In 1999 McFarland & Co. published Dr Anthony Gary Brown's long-awaited biographical companion to
each and every one of the people and ships named in the series
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, SeaRoom
Books …. and many more!
Here's a preview of just a handful of the many thousands of entries:
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin each have entries running to nine full pages of text. Their
biographies are arranged book-by-book, which also enables the reader easily to
track down a particular incident in the series.
Here are two brief extracts
What the
experts say:
Brown “… brings to the task an erudition that is a
worthy match for O'Brian's and, as a result, his book is one of those works of
reference that it is genuinely difficult to put down, with one entry
cross-referencing to another in an enthralling intellectual trail'”
Colin White
Deputy Director of The Royal Naval Museum and author of
’The Nelson Encyclopedia: People, Places, Battles, Ships, Myths, Mistresses,
Memorials, and Memorabilia’
(Stackpole Books, 2003)
“An astonishing
piece of work … and a valuable one too.
A substantial tribute to O’Brian”
Richard Snow
Editor of
American Heritage Magazine
“As
indispensable as a mainmast or a compass for any reader who would put to sea in
[Jack and Stephen’s] company”
Lewis Lapham
Editor of
Harper’s Magazine
Some Statistics
and Background
~ Full biographies of every person named in the series: over 3500 in
total, about 1/2 of whom are fictional and 1/2 historical
~ Full details of every ship named in the series, and derivations of their
names: over 550 in total, the majority of them historical
~ All the named animals (50) and all the named cannon (20)
~ 500 notes on un-named, historical characters and ships that inspired
many of our favorite people and incidents
~ An extensive bibliography of nearly 100 primary sources of
information, fully annotated to show what you can find in these (often quite
obscure) reference tomes
Background to why and how Gary Brown wrote the book
