Grief

January 7, 2000

Writer Patrick O'Brian Dies at 85

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Filed at 3:21 p.m. EST

By The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) -- Patrick O'Brian, whose celebrated novels of 19th
century seafaring won praise from critics and the loyalty of
legions of
readers, has died. He was 85.

O'Brian died in Dublin, Ireland, where he had been working on a book
for several weeks at Trinity College. The cause of death was not
given
and there were conflicting reports of the date.

The British Embassy in Paris said O'Brian died Tuesday, but
newspapers
and the news agency Press Association said he died Sunday. O'Brian
had lived in France since 1949.

O'Brian's major work was a 20-volume series set in the Royal Navy
during the Napoleonic wars.

A deep knowledge of naval history and 19th century life enabled him
to
evoke a time and place so vividly that, in this era of supersonic
jets and
smart bombs, his readers were gripped by the slow-motion suspense of
sea battles fought under sail.

The series, begun in 1969 with ``Master and Commander,'' is the
story
of the friendship between a bold and ambitious navy officer, Jack
Aubrey, and the ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, a naturalist and
secret
agent who doesn't much like sailing.

Although the books were well-reviewed and found an enthusiastic
readership from the start, it wasn't until the 1990s that they
achieved
wide recognition abroad and were lifted out of the ``historical
fiction''
genre in which they generally were reviewed.

In 1991, a New York Times critic called O'Brian ``the best novelist
you
have never heard of.''

``Patrick O'Brian has written great and enduring literature which
happens
to be set largely at sea,'' the Sunday Telegraph wrote in 1997,
praising
``the intensity of characterization, the complex elegance of the
plotting,
and the brilliance of the writing.''

O'Brian also proved that, in the hands of a skilled writer,
specialist
language need not be an obstacle to understanding. Readers who can't
remember which side of a ship is starboard still can feel the
frantic activity
on deck as the sails unfurl and catch the wind, and the excitement
as a
man-of-war turns to engage the enemy.

A lexicon explaining O'Brian's nautical terminology was published,
but
O'Brian didn't think definitions important.

``Ignorance of the cross-catharpins is not necessarily fatal,'' he
once said.
``Explanation almost certainly would be.''

O'Brian's fans range from actor Charlton Heston to critic John
Bayley, a
former Oxford professor of literature who wrote that O'Brian's
``originality consists in the unpretentious use he makes of
(history) to
invent a new style of fiction.''

``No other writer,'' Bayley wrote, ``not even Melville, has
described the
whale and the wandering albatross with O'Brian's studious and yet
lyrical
accuracy.''

O'Brian guarded his privacy, and in his few interviews resisted
questions
about his personal life.

He was born Dec. 12, 1914, in Chalfont St. Peter, west of London,
and
it wasn't until 1998 that he was revealed to be the son of an
English
doctor and not an Irishman as had been widely believed, the Daily
Telegraph said in an obituary Friday.

The newspaper said O'Brian was born Richard Patrick Russ, but
changed his name in 1945. During his school years, he was
frequently ill,
spending much time reading. His writing career began at age 15,
when he
published a book about the union of a giant panda and a snow
leopard.

During World War II, O'Brian drove ambulances and worked briefly
with Britain's Political Intelligence Department.

In 1949, he and his second wife, Mary, moved to Collioure, southern
France. His first seafaring novel was ``The Golden Ocean'' in 1956,
about a Pacific expedition.

O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series was already well under way in
Britain
by the beginning of the 1990s, when editor Starling Lawrence of the
American publisher W.W. Norton chanced to read one on a flight
home.

The rest, as they say, is publishing history.

Several years ago, the writer said he would end the series with the
20th
book, but last month he said he was working on volume 21, the Daily
Telegraph reported.

O'Brian also wrote biographies of Picasso and naturalist Sir Joseph
Banks. A linguist, he translated the work of French writers Simone
de
Beauvoir and Colette.

O'Brian was made a Commander of the Order of British Empire in 1995.

Funeral plans were not announced. He is survived by a son, Richard,
from his first marriage.