Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed

by Dean King

Hailed as the Irish author of "the greatest historical novels ever written"--the 20 swashbuckling Napoleonic-era adventures starring Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin--Patrick O'Brian was not such a great guy. In fact, he wasn't really Patrick O'Brian: he was actually the Englishman Richard Patrick Russ, who abandoned his semiliterate Welsh wife and dying, spina bifida-plagued child in 1940 and reinvented himself as a writer and as a human being. He did well as a writer, winning kudos as a biographer (Picasso), translator (Papillon), and old literary sea lion. But he was less than humane, as Dean King's A Life Revealed reveals. The son of a rotten father, Russ/O'Brian became a rotten father himself, cutting off all contact with his son, granddaughters, and even siblings. As he chillingly wrote in his biography, "Parents are supposed to love their children, yet surely there is the implied condition that the children should be reasonably lovable?" Though he was kinder to his second wife, the Countess Mary Tolstoy, whose reckless driving injured both of them, he once wrote that Picasso was "sucked dry and rendered sterile by women, children, routine." For his part, O'Brian preferred poverty and exile in Southern France with Mary--remote from his family origins, penning masterpieces in a house with books but no electricity or running water. Only in his 70s did he become rich and famous.

You can't deny the many striking parallels between O'Brian's life and his work--even though he did. Rotten fathers permeate his fiction, as the fathomless woe must have permeated him upon his mother's death from tuberculosis in 1918, when he was 4. It's great fun to read about his mad-inventor father's machine to cure VD by electrocuting the bladder and compare it to Maturin's practice and devices--and to hear about the future author's salty Uncle Morse telling the lad about encounters with pirates. Captain Aubrey clearly derives partly from Patrick's sociable man-of-action brother Mike (who changed his surname to O'Brien, another family defector). And of course Maturin proves to be in large part a self-portrait.

Fans of Aubrey and Maturin may find King's A Sea of Words (a lexicon of arcane terms that O'Brian uses) more delightful than his exposé of O'Brian's impressive yet appalling life, but it is one thorough and convincing exposé. --Tim Appelo

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Biography Memoir

407 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 31, 2000

About the author

I like to read, wander cross-country, travel in cultures I don't understand, cycle, play squash, and I'm a foodie. But most of all I like to be in the throes of writing a book. This is invigorating work. The moment when the hard-won research combines with a bit of sweat and blood and occasionally a tear to become a fluid paragraph is like no other. What I hope to achieve is to suspend time and disbelief for the reader and carry her or him into another world, where they live more fully and in the moment.

Reviews

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick O'Brian is the Irish writer of the Master & Commander series, who isn't Irish.

Patrick O'Brian had nothing to do with World War II...except he was a spy.

Patrick O'Brian isn't Patrick O'Brian.

There is a great deal of secrecy and veiled history for such a seemingly benign author of such a pleasant literary series of polite manners and seafaring adventure set during the Napoleonic Wars. I fell in love with that "Aubrey/Maturin" series years ago, read it over numerous times and moved on to other works by the author. At some point I wanted to know more. Dean King, who has written a number of books about O'Brian and his work, clearly also fell in love with the author. You really feel it in his approach.

I'm glad he made the attempt at this difficult task. It couldn't have been easy. So little is known about the man, because the man wanted little to be known about himself. In an effort to distance himself from a less than ideal upbringing, family and flawed marriage, he moved overseas and took on a new personae and detested anyone who defied it, even his loving brother. This seems to have rubbed off on some of his fans, who have not taken kindly to King's intrusion and revelations about their favorite author.

Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed does a fantastic job keeping the timeline in order and moving along. A parallel was made to O'Brian's books and especially the series he's known for. Almost all of the books are given a little synopsis and imbued with historical significance as relates to the author. In fact, it took me as long as it did to read this because I found myself setting it aside to read other O'Brian books that I hadn't gotten to yet. That was fun, but it did make this lengthy tome seem even longer. I'd imagine it would probably seem a chore to anyone other than an O'Brian fan, but for the hardcore among us this is highly recommended!

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book first was published, there immediately followed a dull roar of astonishment about some of the decisions O'Brian had made over the course of his life. I'd always felt that the author had imbued his two main characters with competing aspects of his own personality-I almost felt I knew him by 'knowing' his characters. What terrible things was I to discover? Is it true when they say 'You should never meet your heroes'? Honestly, there are no revelations in King's biography that overwhelmingly disturb me. I'll admit I may feel that way because I had been prepared by the uproar, but I never expected him to be a saintly benevolent old gentleman who'd never done anything unfortunate or regrettable. His is the writing of a man who has wrestled with pain, who has looked into his own soul and fretted.

Lest this become a review of the man rather than the biography: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. King's writing is pleasurable to read and he includes many passages O'Brian's works. I appreciate King's juxtaposing O'Brian's major life events with the events depicted in his books. For me, Patrick O'Brian is now a real man of flesh and blood--King has brought him to life the way O'Brian brought Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin to life. And I believe that is the mark of a successful biography.

[Fr.Bill M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will be disturbing to those who love the Aubrey-Maturin sea-faring novels by Patrick O'Brian. I knew O'Brian was a cranky soul. This portrait tries hard to avoid making him into a thoroughly discreditable cad, but it doesn't really succeed. O'Brian comes off as selfish, pathologically vindictive and cruel, the sort of man whose tires you'd happily slash and whose dog you'd gladly poison once you had his measure.

[Phrodrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bottom Line first:
Dean King’s Patrick O’Brian, A Life Revealed is good biography. The author should have some sympathy for their subject but never let their bias keep them from being critical. Dean King has written such a biography. This book is a definite for fans of any of the several types of writing and translating done by Patrick O’Brian. It is also a definite read for those looking for a well written Biography.

A Life Revealed can only ever be partially true and especially in the case of Patrick O’Brian. For example he changed his name from Russ, to O’Brian. He was not Irish nor is there any record of why he made this change. For the rest of his life, even as his success made him a public figure he was very careful about his personal life and very hostile towards those who made any effort to learn about his real history.

What is best known of his history is his not so sudden appearance as an international star author. He was in his 60’s before starting his most famous books, and they did not become instant best sellers. The writer, author of the 20 completed Aubrey-Maturin, life in Nelson’s Navy books adventure books. The series was motivated by his editor was trying to replace the C. S. Forester Hornblower books, O’Brian took the concept to greater depths and literary value such that he has been compared to the likes of Jane Austin and Tolstoy. Hyperbolic comparisons, but not as unreasonable as the most snobbish literature professors might argue.

O’Brian always needing to supplement his income was also a successful translator, especially noted for his translation of Henri Charrière's Papillon and many of Simone de Beauvoir's later works. He would also write an exhaustive biography of his friend Picasso and of the famous botanist Joseph Banks. Still needing money he took on work typing braille copy for the blind.

Born into a crowded ill-disciplined crumbling house hold, Patrick Russ, the name he was born to, was a sickly child. Lacking athletic ability he became introspective and fascinated by his exposure to books about the animal kingdom and a relative’s collection of insects. He became a published writer in his mid-teens and there after routinely sold short stories to the many magazines then targeting boys.
Two of the novels from this period:
Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda-Leopard
and
Hussein: An Entertainment
Showcased his ability to immerse himself in a world in which he had no direct knowledge and make the reader believe themselves to be the hands of a topic expert. It will become a hallmark of his more popular fiction that he was obsessive about details and authentic to the extreme.

Most of O’Bian’s life was spent at the economic margins. His family life had been closer to poverty than genteel poverty and almost all of his adult life was similarly strained. Not only did this suit him, but his second wife. She escaped from a bad marriage that had in its favor it associated her with the famous Tolstoy family and where she could have lived in immoderate wealth. His first marriage was also terrible but King makes it clear that his abandonment of his first wife was a shoddy reflection on O’Brian.

It is this ability to criticize his otherwise admired subjects that makes Dean King an admirable biographer. He fawns like any other fan when he likes an O’Brian Book. He also has no explanation why O’Brian could quickly warm to some people, and just as fast cold shoulder them out of his life. His subject can thrive with people less sophisticated them himself. Not only in his admiration of them but in there admiration of him.

The O’Brians would excel among the remote country people of Wales and again with the small town people of not yet ‘discovered’ French Catalans. He would write stories and novel about his admiration for these people without offending their clannish reservations. There is an irony in an author using his friendships as fodder for what can be intrusive observations; written by a writer with no patience for these same kinds of intrusions.

A Life Revealed is not fully achieved. Not for lack of trying. Dean King has sought out every family member, including from his first marriage and every record available. How much he admits to not knowing for certain is not due to lack of work but to the fact that many of interviews where with people who had been asked to not disclose all of what they knew. Likely they did not know much more than O’Brian have let them know. No one know for certain why Patrick Russ became Patrick O’Brian.

Patrick O’Brian’s step son was not happy with this biography. He wrote a separate biography:
Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, 1914-1949
King’s book is the better of the two. However Tolstoy , now in his eighties could help complete our understanding of Patrick O’Brian if he can finish telling us his version of his step father’s life

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I had Dean King's Patrick O'Brian figured out after just three chapters, but I was only partly correct. Patrick O'Brian had been revealed as an off-beat, sometimes anti-social man who walled off his sometimes distracting family, so he could write great books and make money.
O'Brian's real surname was Russ, who indirectly seemed to have gotten the name change idea from two nephews who had moved to Australia. But obviously, it worked for him.
He grew up mostly in the London area, but his mother died when he was still a boy. His father was a doctor and inventor. One of his many uncles had shown early interest in writing, but that faded. Richard Patrick (O'Brian) Russ didn't fail there, serving as an intelligence officer in WWII, and started his writing successes with magazine articles that drew attention, which allowed him to build on, and eventually get the call to write about sailing adventures in the late 1960s with Master and Commander published in 1969.
Master and Commander was a joint U.S. and British venture, looking for a good replacement for C.S. Forester and his hero Horatio Hornblower. Captain Jack Aubrey and Surgeon Stephen Maturin sailed to almost instantaneous success. The series finished in double-digit volumes, and in effect died with O'Brian's death in 2000.
Despite his protective walls, O'Brian lived an adventurous life. He was married twice and had one son. A young daughter died of poor health. O'Brian lived in Wales for several years before moving to the coastal South of France for the rest of his life. He found many things to his liking on the Catalan sea coast on the Mediterranean coast.
"O'Brian recognized in Coullioure an authentic people and place, with a tolerance for individuality that suited him. Here his poverty, which he was determined to endure in order to write, would not be so degrading as in England."
O'Brian found the place where sailing boats in the view from his home, could help exact exciting, reader-pleasing adventures.
Celebrities like the painter Picasso were there often enough to keep life interesting, but Coullioure was its own entertainment and inspiration.
"Coullioure had a rugged, earthy physicality and raw beauty, the people of Coullioure, a wild dark attraction.'

[Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to buy the Aubrey Maturin books as they were published, the day they were published, and often used my last dollar to do it. It was worth it.

I waited a bit to read this biography, however, and read the reviews first. Most of the surprises and some of the revelations were not news to me, then. I'm afraid it didn't change my opinion of his writing nor of the man to learn that he was unhappy in his first marriage, that he preferred his second, and that his service during WWII was somewhat clandestine. I enjoyed discovering how those things related to one another, though.

I suppose a biography ought to be read in order to understand the works of the subject about whom it's written. I don't hope to understand much more than the fact that, somehow, a very good English author thought the Napoleonic Wars a fitting subject for fiction.

O'Brian's stepson also wrote a biography, more of a hagiography. After reading this, I was no longer interested.

I like to think of O'Brian as a war hero, a person devoted to honor in the abstract, but to life as it is in person. He may have been a cad, but of course anyone who says something as unattractive as that their children are unlovable would be perceived in this way. Maybe they weren't! Or maybe he was a better person in the abstract than in the flesh.

Having said that, he named himself after his brother! The saying goes that you can choose your lovers, your husband, your wife, but you can't choose your parents. Apparently, O'Brian didn't believe it.

His writing was conservative, essentially, contrarian, vigourous, assertive, inquisitive of the general state of mankind. This biography helps to explain why that might be.

It's a good companion to the twenty Aubrey/Maturin novels.

[Simon]

This is going to be fascinating reading - how much of it will be true..... I wonder! ..... Well, it was a fascinating read, peeling back the layers of this complex and sensitive author. The biographer seems to paint him in a sympathetic light but without covering up his flaws as a human being. I probably wouldn't have liked to meet the author but my admiration for his writing remains undiminished. The best novelist of the twentieth century? Just maybe!

[Mike Hampson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly interesting, especially in the first third or so, but I had hoped for more about what O'Brian did during the War, and more about how he wrote and researched the Aubrey/Maturin books. Given that he was obsessively private, however, I don't know that anyone could really learn much about those.

[Straker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serviceable biography of the famed nautical novelist. O'Brian doesn't come across as a particularly nice man, but you could say that about a lot of noted artists. Still, you have to admire his tenacity, both in his personal life and his writing career.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a straightforward biography of a complex secretive person. This book is fulfilling because it paints a portrait of one of my favorite authors; it is frustrating because O'Brian was such a private man. Well worth the read.

[Scott Pittard]

undetermined.

[Joshua Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

With so many hours invested in the stories and characters created by the author Patrick O'Brian, it was an interesting experience to spend some time engaging with the life of the author although it's clear that he would have disliked the intrusion immensely. I've seen a few people suggest that after reading more about O'Brian's life and character that they now "love the author's work, if not the author himself". Though I doubt I'd have enjoyed O'Brian's company, and his actions in abandoning his first family in the circumstances he did were cruel, its evident that O'Brian himself was not wholly unaware of his unworthy actions and the traits he possessed that society perceives to be flawed. For a person so averse to personal inquiry, King presents an author who allows the reader to read between the lines of his work. In doing so, we can that his difficulty with most relationships was not something he took lightly, and that at least through his characters, he explored this aspect of his character throughout his life. If not for a few isolated instances of detestable behavior in his early life, I see a man who was discriminating in who he spent time with, hoarded his privacy, and did not adhere to society's insistence that we all behave in an extroverted manner for the sake of the general lack of understanding and distaste of introverted behaviors. I thoroughly enjoyed this look at O'Brian's life, and walk away from the experience with an even greater respect for the author who has taught me so much through his works.

[Don Dealga · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Brian 'constructed' his identity and his life narrative almost as carefully and imaginatively as the plot of one of his Maturin-Aubery novels. Fascinating account of the great man's life by Dean King, who is almost the official keeper of the O'Brian heritage! Any fan of O'Brian's fiction will enjoy this biography of Jack and Stephen's "creator" and the complexity of his personality. Just as his Aubery-Maturin series make no allowances for the modern readers with its use of authentic arcane period language and specialized nautical terms, O'Brian's "life story" with its affectation (or at least nondenial) of an Irish heritage, his concealment of his early life (including his Russ family background and his first marriage and child) his fastidious preservation of his private life, is as fascinating and perplexing as some of his more vitrtuoso and opaque plots.
One caveat. This book is very much one 'for the fans', rather than the general reader.

[Bill Chaisson · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an odd book. Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed isn't quite a hagiography, as O'Brian's faults and shortcomings are dutifully recorded, but Dean King seems determined to let the author off easy.

In 1940 O'Brian, then going by his given name Richard Patrick "Pat" Russ, deserted his first wife, his son, and his disabled daughter, leaving them in an isolated cottage in the country. They were taken in by one of his older brothers until they could get on their feet again. In 1945, immediately after the end of World War II, Russ changed his name to Patrick O'Brian, a surname that his brother had used briefly in Australia in order to dodge an irate cuckolded husband. While his older brother went back to the family name in order to join the military, Patrick O'Brian began to construct an elaborate pseudo-biography about being from "the west of Ireland," where Irish was not only his ethnicity, but his first language. He married a former countess and moved first to rural Wales and then to Rousillon in the south of France and remained an expatriate for the rest of his life.

On the face of it, O'Brian was a coward and liar. King implicitly builds a case for explaining why the writer lived as he lived, but he never really pulls together a coherent, convincing argument. His method would seem to be accenuating the positive. The author's childhood does seems to have been rather miserable; it is a story of frail health and steadily declining family fortunes, even before his mother dies when he is only 3 years old. His father is emotionally remote and terrible at managing his career. His stepmother dotes on him, but to an extent that causes friction in the family. The one thing his father pays attention to is his writing, so naturally he is precocious and obsessed with it. He has a youthful career as a writer of boys' adventure stories, but acts as if this makes him an artiste.

After a failed attempt to join the RAF in 1934, Russ is also rejected for military service in WWII and first drives an ambulance (where he meets his second wife, who has also fled a failed first marriage) and then works in the propaganda arm of intelligence. King vaguely suggests that O'Brian may have experienced PTSD because of his intelligence work, but he does not explore this in any depth.

When O'Brian and his wife Mary move to Wales, they join the local farmers in communal activities like sheep shearing, but O'Brian is already also engaged in determined social climbing. He seeks out the local landowning class and joins their hunting escapades. All of this is fodder for the short stories he is writing and publishing through this period, which earn him a meager living.

After three years in Wales, the O'Brians remove to Collioure and remain in France for the rest of their lives. Once again they participate in the local agrarian community, this time in grape growing and wine making. But again, O'Brian seeks out the wealthy denizens and hobnobs with the social class to which he believes he naturally belongs. He is also the quintessential starving artist, writing difficult, dark short stories and novels to only rare acclaim and little remuneration. This achievement gives him an excuse to hang around with the artists who live in Colloiure, including, briefly, Picasso.

King tramps through O'Brian's life chronologically, which leads to the gradual, but inevitable triumph of the Aubrey-Maturin novels. Any reader of these books is bowled over by the meticulous deployment of period detail, but King's presentation of the research behind this only makes O'Brian seem pretentious. It also turns out that the undeniable beauty of O'Brian's prose is the product of a creative process that the author has never examined, and neither does his biographer.

King also has a habit of throwing extraneous facts into the narrative, seemingly because he dug them up or stumbled across them, and they were too interesting to discard. This has the effect of taking away from any power that his argument may have. He also makes a half-hearted effort to draw connections between O'Brian's life and his art. While some examples are convincing, they amount to merely a list and are not presented in an organized critical context.

O'Brian is a man of many contradictions. Chief among them is his attitude toward women. While he clearly loved and respected his second wife, his only son breaks off relations with his father as a young adult when he fully understands how cruel his father was to his mother. O'Brian's biography of Picasso forgives the painter entirely for his often brutal treatment of women and the writer even uses the opportunity to editorialize a bit on the subject. Given all this, it is remarkable that he should then create such a memorable character as Clarissa Oakes, a smart, wounded, difficult, and complex woman, who plays an important role in at least three Aubrey-Maturin novels. Diana Villiers, who is eventually Stephen Maturin's wife, is also a fully realized person who has complicated strengths and weaknesses. Of all his faults, O'Brian's misogyny seems to make King most uncomfortable, which makes his acceptance of the author's snobbery more irritating.

In the end, a reader who simply wants to know the facts of O'Brian's life can find them in King's book, but in order to truly understand both the man and the writer, you will have to look elsewhere.

[Peter Timson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read all the O'Brian Aubrey books, it was sad to think that there would no more... but already time had been distorted somewhat. It was good to read a well written biography and find out something about this secretive, able man. Love the area in which he made his home.

[Mark O'Hagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a huge fan of O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin series (arguably amongst the finest novels ever written) then it’s almost inevitable that you’ll seek out this biography. It gives a great insight and is extremely well researched but an overall score just below 4 stars feels just about right.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh great, now I want to read the entire series by Patrick O’Brian! This biography might not make you like Mr. O’Brian that much but it really tweaks your interest in his books. I actually read Master and Commander long ago but might need to read it again and then there are only 18 more!

[Tim Stafford · Rating 3 out of 5]

For O’Brian fans like me an excellent read. O’Brian was a vain, prickly man completely dedicated to his writing. As a young man he deserted his wife and two children, changed his name, and invented an Irish past that he stuck to all his long life. Not a very nice man, but such a wonderful writer.

[Mark Edon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to look. A literary genius. Not always a nice man. Perhaps those things have to go together.

I think perhaps he did know this and it was at least part of the reason he wanted to stay so private.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.49 stars. Starts slowly as author slogs through O’Brian’s muddled and unhappy formative years in a semi-functional family. The pace and value increase as we get to O’Brian’s reinvention of himself as a successful writer.

More to come

[Tiffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely only for die-hard fans of Patrick O'Brian. Even then there was a lot of skimming of the first half.

[John Barclay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive story of the life of the master. A great book about a very complex and interesting person.

[Thomas]

Didn't finish, not as interesting a life as I thought

[Michael Romo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched, comprehensive look at the life of this secretive author.

[Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dissatisfying, and not because King discusses the now well-known facts of O'Brian's self-invention. Though King ferrets out a great deal of useful and interesting information about O'Brian, this is biography in the subjunctive. There is altogether too much 'must have' 'should have' 'could have' here. When King is not speculating about matters he cannot possibly be sure of, he is drawing links (many of them on the slenderest of evidence) between O'Brian's characters and O'Brian. King doggedly plows through the life publication by publication but often fails to explain how the relatively untutored O'Brian came to the vast knowledge of botany, music, languages and so forth that so animate his novels. We learn, for instance, that O'Brian was tapped for the intelligence service during World War II because of his fluency with languages, without ever learning how the young man acquired this skill. With the death of the author early in 2000, no doubt this volume was methadone to the now O'Brian-deprived addicts of the Aubrey-Maturin series. It gives lots of facts but surely will not stand as the definitive biography.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

More enjoyable by far for its frequent recounting of the events of the Aubrey-Maturin books than for its ostensible subject, the life of the author Patrick O'Brian. This is no fault of Dean King's, although his prose is middling enough. King had very little to work with, since O'Brian refused to cooperate with the biography.

King did uncover a lot of previously unknown and fairly shocking information about O'Brian, but the ultimate takeaway from this book is that a man can live a private life inside his mind that's different from the one you'd imagine knowing only his actions—and that therefore you might not like, or need to like, or need to know, the lives of the authors you revere.

[Caryatid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting. Still some unanswered questions. Haven't read any books by the subject but do wonder how much of them were written by wife Mary, not that this nasty personality would have given her any credit.

[Trin]

Initial thoughts: judging from the interior photographs, the young O'Brian was kind of hot.

What can I say, I'm deep.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it may have lacked a certain scholarly depth, this book was fantastically entertaining.

[Dewayne Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick is a fraud.