Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000) was a British novelist and translator who spent most of his adult life in Collioure, a small town in the south of France. He is best known for the Aubrey-Maturin series, a sequence of 20 historical novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The books follow Captain Jack Aubrey, a bold and gifted sea officer, and his close friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, a physician, naturalist, and intelligence agent. The first novel, Master and Commander, was published in 1969, and O’Brian continued writing the series until his death in 2000.
The Aubrey-Maturin novels are widely praised for their historical accuracy, rich period language, and the depth of the central friendship between Aubrey and Maturin. O’Brian drew heavily on real naval logs, letters, and accounts from the era, and the books capture both the danger of naval combat and the long stretches of daily routine aboard ship. The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, introduced the series to a wider audience.
Beyond the Aubrey-Maturin books, O’Brian wrote biographies of Pablo Picasso and the naturalist Joseph Banks, as well as several earlier novels and short story collections. He was also a respected translator of French literature, producing English editions of works by Simone de Beauvoir and Henri Charriere, among others.