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Patrick O'Brian ( December 12 1914 – January 2 2000 ; original name '''Richard Patrick Russ''') was an English novelist and translator, best known for his '' Aubrey–Maturin Series '' of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centered on the friendship of Captain Jack Aubrey and an Irish–Catalan physician, naturalist and intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin . The 20 novel series is notable for its well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th Century life, as well as its authentic and evocative language. BIOGRAPHY The widely held belief that O'Brian was born in Ireland began to unravel in 1998 when British journalists uncovered that O'Brian was in fact born in Chalfont St. Peter , Buckinghamshire , that he was not a Catholic, and that he was the son of a physician of German descent and an English mother. Dean King's life of O'Brian, ''Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed'', documents the complex personality and life of this enigmatic man of letters. Historian Nikolai Tolstoy is O'Brian's stepson through O'Brian's marriage to Tolstoy's mother, Mary Tolstoy, who divorced Count Dmitri Tolstoy and in July 1945 married Patrick O'Brian. In November 2004, Nikolai Tolstoy published ''Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist'', the first volume in a two part biography of O'Brian using material from the Russ and Tolstoy families and sources including O'Brian's personal library, which Tolstoy inherited on O'Brian's death. LITERARY CAREER In the 1950s O’Brian wrote two books aimed at a younger age-group, '' The Golden Ocean '' and '' The Unknown Shore '', which were based on events of the Anson circumnavigation of 1740 – 1743. Although written many years before the Aubrey–Maturin Series series, the literary antecedents of Aubrey and Maturin can be clearly seen in the characters of Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow. As well as his historical novels, O'Brian wrote several mainstream novels and a body of short stories, and was a respected translator, responsible for the translation of Henri Charrière 's '' Papillon '' into English, Jean Lacouture 's biography of Charles De Gaulle , as well as many of Simone De Beauvoir 's later works. O'Brian also wrote a detailed biography of Sir Joseph Banks , one of the leading scientific figures of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the man largely responsible for the colonization of Australia . O'Brian's biography of , the same French village as O'Brian, and the two came to be acquainted there. O'Brian published several novels and stories under the name Richard Patrick Russ, notably, ''Caesar'' and ''Hussein: an Entertainment'', which were both published before he was 21. Richard Patrick Russ legally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian in 1945. This was a bold stroke in many ways, not least because O'Brian necessarily had to abandon the reputation for quality writing he had already built up under the name Russ. '' is loosely based on the novel ''The Far Side of the World'' from the Aubrey–Maturin Series for its plot, but draws on a number of the novels for incidents within in the film. See also: Aubrey-Maturin Series TRIVIA In 2003 a previously nondescript species of of the Canadian Museum Of Nature . BIOGRAPHIES OF O'BRIAN Since his death, there have been two biographies published, though the first was well advanced when he died. The second is the first volume of a planned two volume biography by O'Brian's stepson. but also of importance when studying O'Brian is BIBLIOGRAPHY The Aubrey–Maturin series See Also: Aubrey–Maturin series Fiction (non-serial)
Non-Fiction
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