Talk:Patrick O'Brian/Archive 1

Untitled
The article mentions the Aubreyad as being a 20 book series. With the recent publication of the first three chapters of the unfinished 21st novel, how should we approach this? Call it a 21 book series? A 20.1 book series? Skyring 02:43, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) There are 20 finished books, so it's a 20-book series.


 * also known as the Aubreyad


 * Ye gods, what a horrible word that is!

Paul Tracy

Common usage in The Gunroom, as is "the canon". Both are fairly basic plays on words, rather appropriate given the subject. Skyring 17:46, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Richard Temple
I added Richard Temple to the bibliography. It's not very well known, but is for real (and worth a read too if you can find it! Try inter-library loans).

Hope that's OK. Monkey Tennis 21:54, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Richard Temple & The Catalans
Both books have just been republished in the UK by HarperCollins.

"Literary Career"
This section says almost nothing about the Aubrey-Maturin series, only about its predecessors and the film adaptation. I can't really fix this, but it's...a problem.--P4k 21:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Separate entry, same heading. Question for author or other editors: Isn't the word "annuals" in the following quote a typo? Shouldn't it be "annals"? "...the first book of contemporary fiction ever published by the Oxford University Press[9], to whose annuals for boys he had been a regular contributor for some years."Voiceperson (talk) 16:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Annual is the correct word, they are books of short stories, factual articles and comic strips etc. that are aimed at boys (and separately girls) and published annually, usually for the Christmas present market. Often they atre associated with weekly comics. Dabbler (talk) 17:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

he died where?
The infobox states Ireland but the biography implies France? 222.154.245.43 (talk) 01:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * He died in Ireland but is buried near his home in France with his wife who predeceased him. Dabbler (talk) 02:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

A new link has been added that shows where he is buried and where he lived in Collioure, France. Plsl82 (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Chronology 'skew-whiff' (English slang for awry)
"by 1935 he was living in London... 1942... by which time O'Brian had left the family in their remote country cottage and returned to London"

Presumably he must have relocated from London to a 'remote country cottage' in between these two dates, yet no mention is made of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.3.98 (talk) 18:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Intelligence connection
O'Brian himself wrote an autobiographical essay in 1994 entitled, "Black Choleric, and Married?" which was included in "Patrick O'Brian: a Bibliography and Critical Appreciation," collected essays edited by AE Cunningham. It was very specific about his intelligence connection, stating: "Some time after the blitz had died away I joined one of those intelligence organisations that flourished during the War, perpetually changing their initials and competing with one another. Our work had to do with France, and more than that I shall not say, since disclosing methods and stratagems that have deceived the enemy once and that may deceive him again seems to me foolish. After the war we retired to Wales (I say we because my wife and I had driven ambulances and served in intelligence together) where we lived for a while in a high Welsh-speaking valley..." The same essay is often included as a standalone piece at the end of book 13: The Thirteen-Gun Salute. As a result, the only interesting thing about including Nikolai Tolstoy's denials of O'Brian's (and his mother's) involvement in intelligence work is the insight it affords us into Nikolai. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AquatiCat (talk • contribs) 14:09, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The quoted text is in the article now, if it was not in 2012. Does it add anything, is my question. If O'Btian so highly valued his privacy, would he have told pure truth when his fame was breaking the walls of his no-longer private life? Other than the pure truth that he did not like personal questions. The Official Secrets Act was potent in Britain, asking people to swear secrecy for life, not for the duration, per the story of the women at Bletchley Park. I have not read King's book, so I do not know if he had access to UK official records showing O'Brian's role in the war. Have those records been opened in the UK yet? The stepson has access to O'Brian's personal papers, and King did not, so where does that leave us? Reading the novels, I think. They are so very good. I wonder if, over time, this brouhaha will get less coverage in an article like this, and his way of writing historical fiction will take up more space. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

organization of article
This article mixes the personal life with the literary life too much, for easy reading. Even when the section title is Literary career, family is mixed in, and throughout the Biography section (rather than the frequent title of Personal life), the two topics are liberally mixed up. I have read a few articles about writers, and there seems more separation between career and personal life, in the article. His literary awards were so buried in the article, I did realize he was honored. I made changes to make the awards more visible, adding Awards to a subsection heading, separating a long paragraph into two. Anyone else think the article would benefit from more separation of the two aspects of his life? Mulling it over. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, I mulled it over and split the text more cleanly, I think, as to personal life and literary career. Literary career is looking thin, with personal life stripped out to its own paragraphs. The Media exposure section in Personal life is expanded, with a review of each of the competing biographies printed in the 21st century, after the earlier expose by BBC and a newspaper in London, when O'Brian was still alive. Fans seemed to be stung by the expose perhaps as much as O'Brian had been, in his time of mourning. I added some references I thought relevant, scattered in reviews of the novels or in the article on the Aubrey-Maturin series. Hope this is an improvement in clarity, backed up with sources. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:53, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Shebbear College
Both his biographies, Dean King and Nikolai Tolstoy say that while other members of his family attended Shebbear College, Patrick O'Brian did not. The suggested reference on the Shebbear College page does not lead to any page. Dabbler (talk) 03:15, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Sailing experience
(I suggested this addition to section 1.1 or insertion as a separate section, but have now done so myself. I encountered a discrepancy for the British Library publication year, which my research as shown below indicates is 1993, but I decided to leave the existing citation unchanged.)

As background to his later sea-going novels, O'Brian did claim to have had limited experience on a square-rigged sailing vessel, as described in his previously-quoted 1994 essay.

"The disease that racked my bosom every now and then did not much affect my strength and when it left me in peace (for there were long remissions) sea-air and sea-voyages were recommended. An uncle had a two-ton sloop and several friends had boats, which was fine, but what was even better was that my particular friend Edward, who shared a tutor with me, had a cousin who possessed an ocean-going yacht, a converted square-rigged merchantman, that he used to crew with undergraduates and fair-sized boys, together with some real seamen, and sail far off into the Atlantic. The young are wonderfully resilient, and although I never became much of a topman, after a while I could hand, reef and steer without disgrace, which allowed more ambitious sailoring later on."

Cliffewiki (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I commented out what you added, because it is essential to check with sources published after O'Brian's death in 2000 to sort out which stories were true and which were not. Both Dean King and O'Brian's stepson Nikolai Tolstoy published biographies after that year. A few journalists wrote about him as well, often in articles cited in this wiki article or those about his novels. It was just a short time before his death that the change of name from Russ to O'Brian was revealed to the public by an investigative reporter, and many interviews were found to have fanciful stories in them. I do not know if this is one of those, which is why I would not let it show in the article until the other sources are checked. I have a vague memory from reading many articles written this century that this story is unlikely to be true, but I cannot recall the source at this moment. O'Brian started his life anew, with a new wife, new name, after the second world war, and did not really like questions about his early life. I hope you understand that aspect of O'Brian, and the need to be certain this is a true story, not just something written by him in the essay for Cunningham. He did not need to have been a sailor in his youth to write these extraordinary novels. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:26, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Indeed I do understand, hence taking care to note that he "claimed" said experience, which is of course borne out in the quoted text referenced. But your valuable addendum must remain to shed light on this often-questioned issue. My insertion is still visible, btw, so am curious what you mean by "commented out." I don't see standard HTML comment tags in the raw, so perhaps they were rejected by the Wikiware? I myself am inclined to credit his claim due to the sheer depth of rig-handling detail in all of the novels. It's always possible he relied on consulting old hands from the days of commercial sail or from tall ship sail-training staff of various nations who've inherited such expertise, but hard to imagine it was gained via research in the British Library, etc. In any case, thank you. Cliffewiki (talk) 22:59, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I changed the article to include Tom Perkns opinions and decommented the article. Dabbler (talk) 23:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * I checked both modified links, and they work, get to the correct web page. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Punctuation
First the article quoted had a full stop or period at the end of the quote, not a comma so inserting a comma into the quote is falsifying the quote. Second, the question of whether a commas is necessary between the quote and the conjunction is debatable, some stylists like it some do not, I don't think Wikipedia has a consistent policy on this. Thirdly the article is written in British English and so any added punctuation should follow British English rules which state that it should be outside the quotation marks. Dabbler (talk) 14:09, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * lol. Dude I'm not gonna argue about it. I suggest you consult someone with a degree in English who is teaching it at university level. Maybe they've changed the rules of punctuation since I taught it. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:23, 4 April 2018 (UTC)