Section one – Author overview and comparison Of the many authors writing naval history, there are some that take their talents to create worlds of there own that can, at times, parallel our own. The writers of historical fiction can create some incredibly entertaining works. For the purposes of this paper three authors will be focused on. These three are Patrick O’Brian, C.S. Forester and Dudley Pope. These authors are some of the most renown for their many publications. Each of them has created at least one series of novels on the premise of historical naval fiction. Patrick O’Brian created the series of novels of Captain Jack Aubrey and his companion Dr. Stephen Maturin (known as the Aubrey-Maturin series). C.S. Forester is the creator …show more content…
Born in 1914 in Chalfort St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, he would publish his first book at the young age of fifteen entitled Caesar: The life story of a panda-leopard. This was an examination of the cruelty and beauty of the world. Caesar is a creature with a giant panda for a father and a snow leopard for a mother. Even at this young age his writing style can still be felt. His fascination with the natural world and the precision of his writing are evident. At the age of twenty he underwent training with the Royal Air Force as a pilot. This, however was short lived, and O’Brian would end up in London where he would marry his first wife in 1936; having two …show more content…
The first of which is from O’Brian’s biographer Dean King, published in March on 2000. In Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, King makes reference to an essay written by O’Brian in which he speaks about his involvement in the field of intelligence gathering for the British Government, where he would also meet his second wife Mary. King believes that it is these experiences in the war that inspired his character Stephen Maturin, the Irish Catholic naturalist who becomes an intelligence officer during the Napoleonic War. The second school is that of O’Brian’s stepson, Nikolai Tolstoy (son of Mary). Tolstoy refutes Kings claim that his stepfather was an intelligence officer and that he was simply a volunteer ambulance driver during the blitz (where O’Brian would meet Tolstoy’s mother Mary). O’Brian would start to work on what would become a 20 volume series in 1969, the first of which would be published that year; Master and Commander. The last, Blue at the Mizzen was first published in 1999. Though his unfinished twenty-first book would also be published in 2004 (just four years after his death), The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (21 in the U.S.A). The series would become so successful that a feature film was released in 2003 that drew on several different books in the series for the
Roberts was born in 1905 to a working class family in a Salford slum. He took a position as an engineering apprentice following his completion of school. Following his apprenticeship, he was unemployed for three years, utilizing this time to study languages. After becoming a teacher, Roberts wrote many award winning stories, plays, and scripts. Roberts became a farmer for sixteen years before beginning a career teaching in prisons. Roberts...
Barron, W.R.J., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.. New York: Manchester University Press, 1974.
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The World Book Encyclopedia. 2000 ed. : p. 78. Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. The "Scarlet Letter" The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Ed.
Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor is a critically acclaimed novella set around the shores of England in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century. The plot revolved around a young Sailor, Billy Budd, who was extracted from the ship he was originally on, The Rights of Man, and was oppressed to a British naval warship named the H.M.S. Billopotent. There were numerous allusions used throughout the novella that enhanced the meaning of this great work. The allusions used pertain towards myths, the Bible, History, and other works of literature. All of them together illuminate the true meaning of the entire novella.
The "Battle Royal" Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama. 9th ed. and Interactive ed. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 162-213.
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Sir Gawain and The Green Knight Trans. Marie Boroff. New York : W.W. Norton, 2001.
I personally found this book to be an excellent read, and while I haven’t read to many business management books. I can feel safe to say that I think this one does an excellent job in conveying key management principals for today’s workplace. It also appealed to me due to my fascination with the way in which our military operates. I believe he did a great job of staying clear of getting too detailed in either is leadership model and military jargon. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels intimidated by management books that read more like a textbook, who want to learn but also enjoy the reading too.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. p. 2256
Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S Forester is a fictional account of lieutenant, soon to be captain Horatio Hornblower. This novel. But one in a series of stories outlining the accounts of lieutenant Hornblower. During the 18th century, England was asserting herself as a world sea power, and continued to dominate the high seas for the larger part of the 18th and 19th centuries. There are a multitude of factors in this story in which outline the real life day-to-day faring of a sea captain, the ship, her crew and their struggles in this era, such as: Blockades and privateering, navigation and seamanship, rations and supplies, and the issues of crew payment, recruiting and welfare. Each contributing significantly to the outcome of the novel which see's lieutenant Hornblower promoted to Captain by the conclusion of this novel, a feat not easily accomplished.
...ce at his childhood and his trained skills of writing, therefore, led him to his success and become noticed by child readers.
History is no more confined to a monolithic collection of facts and their hegemonic interpretations but has found a prominent space in narratives. The recent surge in using narrative in contemporary history has given historical fiction a space in historiography. With Hayden White’s definition of history as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse” literature is perceived to be closer to historiography, in the present age (ix). History has regained acceptance and popularity in the guise of fiction, as signified by the rising status of historical fiction in the post colonial literary world.