Patrick O'Brian

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A Bestselling Author's About-Face

When Patrick O'Brian died last year at the age of 85, he held the honor of being a Commander of the British Empire, this despite the fact that, as a young man, he had been rejected for the British Royal Navy because of poor health. O'Brian's historical novels about the Navy have had such an impact -- three million of his Aubrey-Maturin novels have sold to date -- that he was honored for "a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of books."

The man who wrote so openly and evocatively of the Navy and of the relationships between the men who lived and worked together on its boats was fiercely protective of his own life. When O'Brian worked for British intelligence, the maxim "Careless talk costs lives" was posted all around the offices. O'Brian took this idea to heart, making discretion the highest value in the plots of his novels and disseminating false and misleading information about his own past -- most notably, the idea that he was of Irish descent. In Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed, author Dean King attempts to sift through the myths and misinformation, the lies and legends that have long surrounded this enigmatic writer.

It is a difficult task. O'Brian declined to cooperate with King and asked those close to him to do likewise. It is perhaps telling that one of the people King thanks most profusely in the book's introduction is O'Brian's son, Richard Russ, who was abandoned by his father at an early age and who took back his father's original surname upon his marriage.

Nevertheless, King has managed to forge a fascinating portrait of a man whose day-to-day existence contrasted sharply with the world found in his books. The books' naval setting was not the only place where a comparison could be drawn; while O'Brian's novels were frequently lauded for the keen eye they cast on relationships between males, the relationships with the men in his own life were frequently strained -- he refused to introduce his father to his son.

One thing is certain about O'Brian's life: He was a man who, from an early age, immersed himself in words. O'Brian wrote his first novel, about a panda-leopard, when he was only 15; his father, who was a specialist in venereal diseases and an inventor, brokered the book deal. By the time he was 16, he was being heralded as the "boy-Thoreau" by some English publications. Much of his early work focused on the relationship between man and beast and was cited by critics for its insightfulness.

In 1936 O'Brian married a woman named Elizabeth Jones, with whom he had two children. Richard was the elder; his younger sister, Jill, suffered from spina bifida and died at the age of three. O'Brian separated from his wife in 1940, and a year later moved in with Mary Tolstoy, who was also married at the time as well. (In a strange twist of irony, she was married to a man who would later write a definitive work on the legal machinations of divorce.) Both were eventually divorced, and in 1945 they married, with Patrick legally changing his surname from Russ to O'Brian.

The O'Brians moved from Wales to France, with Patrick continuing to write; he specialized mainly in translations during the 1960s. In 1967, he signed a contract to write his first historical novel about the Navy -- this book, Master and Commander, would be the first in the series of Aubrey-Maturin novels, which were notable for their vivid characterizations and critical accolades. Though the series was an immediate success in Britain, it would take years before O'Brian's books caught on in the United States. Once they did, O'Brian quickly became a "marquee author" like Michael Crichton or Stephen King.

Despite an occasional -- and perhaps, under the circumstances, unavoidable -- paucity of detail, Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed paints a fascinating portrait of a man whose drive for success—and love for the seas—resulted in one of the most successful literary careers of our time.

—Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston is a freelance writer. She lives on Long Island.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After navigating the bestselling Aubrey-Maturin novels' far-flung geography and obscure terminology (in Harbors and High Seas, etc.), King discovered in 1997 that the reclusive O'Brian had invented his own life story as well as his characters'—beginning with changing his name from Richard Patrick Russ and concocting a patrician Irish-Catholic lineage. King's biography, though sometimes patchy, portrays a complex, unhappy family history, a multifarious artistic career and a flawed, indomitable personality. Born in England into the large family of a bankrupt doctor of German origin, the sickly Richard (known as "Pat") began writing boys' adventure stories when only a boy himself. This early literary phase was halted by WWII, during which O'Brian worked in the Foreign Office's shadowy Political Intelligence Division, where he met Mary Wicksteed Tolstoy. After the war, they divorced their spouses and married, O'Brian legally changing his name from Russ. Although his subsequent serious fiction was well received, the O'Brians lived in obscurity, at times near poverty, in Wales and southern France, while O'Brian translated Simone de Beauvoir and lesser writers to get by. King's retelling of the origin of Master and Commander and the following 19 Aubrey-Maturin novels depicts how O'Brian transformed an editor's idea for a C. S. Forester replacement into a genre-busting sea-going roman-fleuve. The glimpses into O'Brian's personal life that King salvages from the author's secrecy include estrangement from his surviving siblings and his son from his first marriage. Steering just clear of judging O'Brian's shortcomings, King's charting of this stormy life makes it clear that O'Brian (who died earlier this year at 85) saved his best for his beloved Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Patrick O'Brian, who passed away this January at age 85, did not authorize King's intriguing and extraordinarily detailed biography—which is understandable, since O'Brian fictionalized so much of his life. O'Brian is best known for his 20-book naval series on the Napoleonic wars—and, more particularly, the friendship between the two protagonists, Capt. Jack Aubrey and surgeon/intelligence agent Stephen Maturin. King (author of A Sea of Words and Harbors and High Seas and editor of Holt's Heart of Oak Sea Classics series) argues that O'Brian's prolific and knowledgeable writing—acclaimed and translated into several languages—owes more than a little to his divided life, his failures, and his need to reinvent himself. Born in London (not in Ireland, as he claimed), O'Brian changed his name from Richard Patrick Russ after World War II. Previously, he had left his wife (a domestic) and two children and married an English-born Russian countess. From that point on, O'Brian disowned his past, revealing to others only what he chose to invent. Ironically, this new existence allowed O'Brian to write knowingly of injustice, human relationships, love, and humanity. This worthy biography, the first major study of O'Brian, is recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/99; the manuscript is being updated to incorporate information on O'Brian's death, so the publication date may slip.--Ed.]--Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Hines

King is well qualified to act the biographer to O'Brian, and has, despite the lack of help from his subject, written an excellent book. It wills tand for some time as the source for the life of this talented complex man.
—Times Literary Supplement