C.S. Forester books

Anthologies

Children’s

Horatio Hornblower Reading Order

Horatio Hornblower Collections Reading Order

Horatio Hornblower Non-Fiction Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Plays

Short Stories/Novellas

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

C.S. Forester (1899-1966) was one of the twentieth century’s foremost writers of historical and naval fiction. His Horatio Hornblower series, twelve novels published between 1937 and 1967, follows a Royal Navy officer through the ranks during the Napoleonic Wars. The books were not written in chronological order — Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, which covers the earliest period, appeared in 1950 — giving readers the choice of publication order or internal chronology.

Beyond Hornblower, Forester wrote The African Queen (1935), later filmed by John Huston with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, and The Good Shepherd (1955), adapted as the 2020 film Greyhound starring Tom Hanks. His standalone novels, nonfiction works about naval history, and children’s book Poo-Poo and the Dragons round out a diverse catalog of eighty-seven titles spanning from 1924 to posthumous publications.

Forester’s influence on naval fiction is hard to overstate. Patrick O’Brian, Dewey Lambdin, and other writers of age-of-sail fiction have acknowledged his Hornblower novels as a primary inspiration. His spare prose and attention to the technical realities of sailing warfare set a standard for the genre.