Preface
This is C. S. Forester’s first Hornblower novel chronologically.
Horatio Hornblower, only seventeen years old, gets his sea legs in this “absolutely compelling” (San Francisco Chronicle) first instalment of C. S. Forester’s classic naval adventure series.
The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. Though not an unqualified success, this first naval adventure teaches the young midshipman enough to launch him on a series of increasingly glorious exploits. This novel — in which young Horatio gets his sea legs, proves his mettle, and shows the makings of the legend he will become — is the first of the eleven swashbuckling Hornblower tales that are today regarded as classic adventure stories of the sea.
“I recommend Forester to every literate I know.” –Ernest Hemingway
https://www.booktopia.com.au/mr-midshipman-hornblower-c-s-forester/book/9780316289122.html
Series Preface
Overview
Horatio Hornblower is a fictional officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, the protagonist of a series of novels and stories by C. S. Forester. He later became the subject of films and radio and television programmes, and C. Northcote Parkinson elaborated a “biography” of him, The True Story of Horatio Hornblower.
Forester’s series about Hornblower tales began with the novel The Happy Return, published in 1937. Herein, Hornblower is a captain on a secret mission to Central America in 1808. Later stories fill out his career, starting with his unpromising beginning as a seasick midshipman. As the Napoleonic Wars progress, he steadily gains promotion as a result of his skill and daring, despite his initial poverty and lack of influential friends. After surviving many adventures in a wide variety of locales, he rises to become Admiral of the Fleet.
Inspirations
Forester’s original inspiration was an old copy of the Naval Chronicle that described the effective dates of the Treaty of Ghent. Two countries could be at war in one part of the world after a peace was obtained months before in another part because of the time required to communicate around the world. The burdens that this placed on captains far from home led Forester to invent a character struggling with the stresses of a “man alone”.
Many parallels exist between Hornblower and real naval officers of the period, notably Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Sir George Cockburn, Lord Cochrane, Sir Edward Pellew, Jeremiah Coghlan, Sir James Gordon, and Sir William Hoste. The actions of the Royal Navy at the time, documented in official reports and in the Naval Chronicle, provided much of the material for Hornblower’s fictional adventures.
The name ‘Horatio’ was inspired by the character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and chosen also because of its association with contemporary figures such as Nelson. The surname ‘Hornblower’ comes from Arthur Hornblow, a Hollywood producer who was a colleague and friend of Forester’s.
Frederick Marryat has been identified as ‘the father of the seafaring adventure novel’ from which all others followed, from C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower to Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Hornblower and the eponymous protagonist of Marryat’s novel Peter Simple both start their careers rather unpromisingly and without influential friends, but advance through hard work, honesty, and bravery. Both fight duels before their careers have properly started and both are taken prisoner early in their careers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Hornblower
The chronological order of the Hornblower books, as far as we can work out, is below:
- Midshipman Hornblower (1950)
- Lieutenant Hornblower (1952)
- Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962)
- Hornblower and the Crisis (1967)
- Hornblower and the Atropos (1953)
- The Happy Return (1937)
- Ship of the Line (1938)
- Flying Colours (1938)
- The Commodore (1945)
- Lord Hornblower (1946)
https://www.orderofbooks.com/characters/horatio-hornblower/
About the Author
C.S. Forester, in full, Cecil Scott Forester, (born 27 August 1899, Cairo, Egypt—died 2 April 1966, Fullerton, California, U.S.), British historical novelist and journalist best known as the creator of the British naval officer Horatio Hornblower, whose rise from midshipman to admiral and peer during the Napoleonic Wars is told in a series of 12 novels, beginning with The Happy Return in 1937 (U.S. title Beat to Quarters).
Abandoning medicine for writing, Forester achieved success with his first novel, Payment Deferred (1926); others included Brown on Resolution (1929), The Gun (1933), The General (1936), and The Ship (1943). Many of his novels were adapted to motion pictures; most notable among them is The African Queen (1935), which was made into an extraordinarily successful film in 1951 by writer James Agee and director John Huston. Forester also wrote biographies and history books, including The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck (1959; also titled Sink the Bismarck!).
Forester described the genesis and progress of the Hornblower series in the self-revealing Hornblower Companion (1964). He was a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. During World War II he worked as a propagandist in Great Britain and the United States. The last of the Hornblower books, Hornblower and the Crisis (1967), was published posthumously.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-S-Forester
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.