Seafaring Novelist Patrick O'Brian Dead at 85

Staff -- Library Journal, 1/17/2000

British novelist Patrick O'Brian, whose numerous seafaring adventures of characters Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin won him millions of loyal fans, died early January 7 in Dublin, Ireland, where he had been researching another novel. He was 85. Though O'Brian's novels primarily were historical adventures set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars, critics as well as fans were enthralled by his attention to detail as well as his gripping storytelling abilities. O'Brian published his first Aubrey/Maturin volume, Master and Command, in 1969, adding 19 other installations in the following decades. Arabella Pike, O'Brian's editor at HarperCollins, said that several chapters of the next volume were completed at the time of his death, but it is unlikely that the material will ever be released.