Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed

"Dean King tells the story of a man born Richard Patrick Russ, who first achieved recognition as an adolescent with a series of popular adventure stories. After the Second World War, he emerged as Patrick O'Brian, a writer of dark, short stories and highly literary novels, who also enjoyed success as a translator and biographer. Slowly, the O'Brian persona, forged in his own imagination and refined by years of rumour and speculation, took form, until his ultimate triumphant arrival as a masterful historical novelist and chronicler of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian's past - both real and imagined - is linked directly to his writing, as he drew deeply on the painful events of his early life. It has long been assumed that he himself was the model for the polymathic naval surgeon and intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, who, along with Captain Jack Aubrey, forms the heart of O'Brian's monumental roman-fleuve."--Jacket.