Master an dcommander12/28/2023 ![]() Irish Protestants bemoaned the lack of an effective political voice and the fact that much of the best agricultural land was held by absentee English landlords, while the majority Catholic population was excluded from full participation in politics and the respectable professions. ![]() Ireland was then a country governed by Britain, and political dissent had been increasing for some time. Events in the novel also largely take place in the Mediterranean, with the French, British, and Spanish navies attempting to capture and disrupt the merchant shipping of their enemies.Ī significant subplot of the novel concerns the divided loyalties of two Irishmen, Dillon and Maturin, following their involvement in the unsuccessful Irish Rebellion of 1798. The novel opens on 18 April 1800 and covers the period until mid 1801, the action being portrayed within the historical setting of War of the Second Coalition, one phase in England's long and continuing war against the French following Nelson's victories in the Mediterranean, including the British victory at the 1798 Battle of the Nile. O'Brian's biographer has placed the novel at the start of what he called the author's magnum opus, a series that has become perhaps the best-loved roman fleuve of the 20th century. Norton & Company re-issued the book and its sequels, which was an almost immediate success and drew O'Brian a new and large readership. The novel has been lauded for having "a brilliant sense of period", and for O'Brian's "easy command of the philosophical, political, sensual and social temper of the times flavors a rich entertainment", putting the reader into the times in every aspect, from exceptional detail on the practices of the Royal Navy on sailing ships to the states of science, medicine, and society during the Napoleonic era. In Britain and Ireland, however, voices of praise gradually became dominant. Although UK sales were respectable enough for O'Brian to continue with the series, it was not initially a success in the US. Master and Commander met with mixed reviews on its first publication. The naval action in the Mediterranean is closely based on the real-life exploits of Lord Cochrane, including a battle modelled after Cochrane's spectacular victory in the brig HMS Speedy over the vastly superior Spanish frigate El Gamo. They sail in HM sloop-of-war Sophie with first lieutenant James Dillon, a wealthy and aristocratic Irishman. It follows the young Jack Aubrey, a Royal Navy lieutenant who has just been promoted to the rank of Master and Commander, effectively a captain and Stephen Maturin, a destitute physician and naturalist whom Aubrey appoints as his naval surgeon. The novel is set at the turn of the 19th century. The book proved to be the start of the 20-novel Aubrey–Maturin series, set largely in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, on which O'Brian continued working until his death in 2000. Master and Commander is a nautical historical novel by the English author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1969 in the US and 1970 in the UK.
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