Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > O'Brian, Patrick - Frank Stewart (review date 4 April 1993)

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Frank Stewart (review date 4 April 1993)

SOURCE: “The Very Social Scientist,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 4, 1993, p. 9.

[In the following review, Stewart praises O'Brian's ability to skillfully condense large amounts of biographical material in Joseph Banks: A Life, but complains that O'Brian shows too much deference to his subject.]

When Captain James Cook returned from his first great circumnavigation of the globe in 1771, the British public was wild with admiration. We have forgotten, though, that public adoration at the time was not for James Cook at all but for his young naturalist passenger, Joseph Banks, whose life Patrick O'Brian recounts in Joseph Banks: A Life. As quickly as the Endeavor docked, Cook was shunted aside and forgotten in the excitement. The expedition was popularly referred to as “Mr. Banks's Voyage,” and some newspapers reported—wrongly—that Banks and not Cook had been...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Bayley (essay date 7 November 1991)
   2. Frank Stewart (review date 4 April 1993)
   3. Byron Rogers (review date 10 July 1993)
   4. Michael Dirda (review date August 1993)
   5. Patrick T. Reardon (review date 19 December 1993)
   6. Frederick Pratter (review date 31 December 1993)
   7. John Balzar (review date 2 January 1994)
   8. Thomas McGonigle (review date 2 January 1994)
   9. Elliott Abrams (review date 24 January 1994)
   10. James Hamilton-Paterson (review date 26 December 1994)
   11. Frederick Pratter (review date 2 May 1995)
   12. Katherine A. Powers (review date July 1995)
   13. Sam Pickering (review date Spring 1996)
   14. Thomas R. Edwards (essay date Summer 1996)
   15. John Balzar (review date 20 October 1996)
   16. Edward T. Wheeler (review date 8 November 1996)
   17. Christopher Clausen (review date 16 December 1996)
   18. James Teacher (review date 4 January 1997)
   19. John Mullan (review date 10 January 1997)
   20. Books Magazine (review date October 1997)
   21. Molly Finn (essay date 19 June 1998)
   22. Alan Judd (review date 22 August 1998)
   23. Barbara Everett (review date 4 September 1998)
   24. Martin Jacques (review date 6 September 1998)
   25. Christopher Hitchens (essay date 9 March 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright