Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > O'Brian, Patrick - Thomas R. Edwards (essay date Summer 1996)

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Thomas R. Edwards (essay date Summer 1996)

SOURCE: “The O'Brian Touch,” in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Summer, 1996, pp. 116–31.

[In the following essay, Edwards offers a positive assessment of the Aubrey/Maturin series, stating that the novels transcend mere genre writing.]

Admirers of Patrick O'Brian's historical novels sometimes think of the literate English-speaking world as divided into three parts: themselves, people who haven't yet read the books, and those—so few as to be negligible—who do know but don't like them. The second group may need to hear that there are now seventeen novels dealing with the adventures during the Napoleonic wars of Captain John Aubrey, R.N., and his shipmate and close friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, physician, naturalist, and intelligence agent.

Our sense of who we are includes memories of the reading that brought us pleasure and illumination at the right time; Keats on...

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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