The Letter of Marque (Aubrey-Maturin Series #12)

by Patrick O'Brian

Overview

"Fine stuff...[The Letter of Marque] leaves the devotee of naval fiction eager for sequels." —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

Captain Jack Aubrey, a brilliant and experienced officer, has been struck off the list of post-captains for a crime he did not commit. His old friend Stephen Maturin, usually cast as a ship's surgeon to mask his discreet activities on behalf of British Intelligence, has bought for Aubrey his former ship the Surprise to command as a privateer, more politely termed a letter of marque. Together they sail on a desperate mission against the French, which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from the private hell of his disgrace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393309058
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/17/1992
Series:	Aubrey-Maturin Series , #12
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

Date of Birth:

December 12, 1914

Date of Death:

January 2, 2000

Place of Birth:

Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire

Place of Death:

Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Shebbear College, Devon

Website:

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobhome.htm

What People are Saying About This

Robert Massie

I have been enthralled since reading Master and Commander. Now, having just finished Desolation Island, I find myself curiously anxious to slow down. True, nine volumes await me, but what I have read is so rich and splendid that I need to ponder and digest.

Eudora Welty

[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader...savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity.

Editorial Reviews

"[O’Brian’s] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today’s putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade."

New York Times - David Mamet

"O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century."

George Will

"The Aubrey-Maturin series… far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart."

New York Times - Ken Ringle

"I devoured Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog."

Slate - Christopher Hitchens

"The best historical novels ever written… On every page Mr. O’Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don’t, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."

New York Times Book Review - Richard Snow

"I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop."

Boston Globe - Edward O. Wilson

"It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleonic-era historical novels… What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love."

New York Times - Tamar Lewin

"Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit."

A. S. Byatt

"I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me."

Keith Richards

"[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader...savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity."

Eudora Welty

"There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his."

Chicago Sun-Times - Stephen Becker

"Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars."

New Republic - James Hamilton-Paterson

"The Letter of Marque is both serious and light-hearted, true and sentimental, as comic opera can be."

London Review of Books - Peter Campbell

These novels, thoroughly steeped in their Nelsonic period, were originally hailed as Hornblower's natural successors, and in certain respects—humor, characterization—have succeeded in stealing the wind from that paragon's sails.
—Stephen Vaughan, Observer

Stephen Vaughan