Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels follow two friends, Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, through the wars against Napoleon. Reviewing the series in The New York Times Book Review in 1991, Richard Snow called them “the best historical novels ever written”, and that line has followed the books ever since.
The series runs to 20 completed novels, published between 1969 and 1999, plus an unfinished 21st that appeared after O’Brian’s death. This guide gives the full reading order, explains the famously elastic timeline, flags the two books with different UK and US titles, and covers the companion books and the film.
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Quick Series Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Author | Patrick O’Brian (1914 to 2000) |
| Number of books | 20 completed novels plus 1 unfinished fragment |
| First book | Master and Commander (1969) |
| Latest book | The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004, published after the author’s death; US title 21) |
| Setting | 1800 to the years just after Waterloo; the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the East Indies, the Pacific, and England ashore |
| Genre | Naval historical fiction, literary historical fiction |
| Reading order | Publication order, which is also the story order |
| Status | Complete; no further books |
Aubrey-Maturin Books in Publication Order
Read these in the order they were published. The novels form one continuous story, with friendships, marriages, careers, debts, and an intelligence war all carried from book to book, so each volume assumes you have read the ones before it.
If you already know you are in for the long haul, The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels collects the whole series in a five-volume boxed set. Otherwise, start with book one and see how you get on.
1. Master and Commander (1969)
Setting: 1800 to 1801, Minorca and the western Mediterranean
Jack Aubrey, a Royal Navy lieutenant without a ship, meets Stephen Maturin at a concert in Port Mahon, where the two nearly come to blows over Aubrey beating time out of rhythm. The next day, Aubrey is promoted to master and commander of the 14-gun sloop HMS Sophie, and he invites the penniless Irish-Catalan physician to sail as her surgeon. Sophie’s cruise against French and Spanish shipping is modeled on the real exploits of Thomas Cochrane in HMS Speedy.
The first US edition appeared in 1969 and the first UK edition in 1970. Everything the series becomes starts here: the friendship, the music, the natural history, and the comedy of a landsman learning his way around a ship.
2. Post Captain (1972)
Setting: 1802 to 1804, England, France, Spain and the Channel
The Peace of Amiens leaves Aubrey and Maturin ashore, sharing a country house in England and getting to know their neighbors, the Williams family. Both men are drawn to Sophia Williams and her cousin Diana Villiers, and the rivalry puts the friendship under real strain. Then Aubrey’s prize money vanishes, his creditors close in, and the return of war finds the pair on the wrong side of the Channel.
This is the most Jane Austen of the novels, with as much drawing-room maneuvering as gunnery. It also sets up the relationships that drive the rest of the series.
3. HMS Surprise (1973)
Setting: From late 1804, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean
Aubrey is given the frigate HMS Surprise and ordered to carry a British envoy to the Sultan of Kampong on the Malay Peninsula. The long passage out, by way of Brazil and India, gives Maturin his first sustained chance at the natural history of the tropics and sharpens his intelligence work. On the far side of the Indian Ocean, a French squadron under Admiral Linois is hunting the East India Company’s China Fleet, an encounter based on the real Battle of Pulo Aura.
The Surprise becomes the ship of the series, the one Aubrey loves best and returns to again and again. Many readers say this is the book where the series fully finds its voice.
4. The Mauritius Command (1977)
Setting: Around 1809 to 1810, England, Cape Town and the Indian Ocean
Aubrey is ashore at Ashgrove Cottage, restless and short of money, when Maturin arrives with orders. He is to take the frigate Boadicea to the Cape and, as commodore of a small squadron, move against the French islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. For the first time, he must manage other captains as well as his own crew, and some of them are harder to handle than the enemy.
O’Brian based the novel closely on the real Mauritius campaign of 1809 to 1811, led in history by Commodore Josias Rowley. It is the best place in the series to watch Aubrey think as a strategist.
5. Desolation Island (1978)
Setting: Around 1811, the Atlantic and the far Southern Ocean
Aubrey takes command of the elderly 50-gun HMS Leopard, bound for New South Wales, where Governor William Bligh has been deposed by his own colony. The ship also carries a consignment of convicts, among them Louisa Wogan, an American suspected of spying, in whom Maturin takes a professional interest. Then a Dutch 74-gun ship of the line, the Waakzaamheid, finds the Leopard in the high southern latitudes, and she is far too powerful to fight.
The chase through the storms of the Southern Ocean is one of the most admired passages in the whole series. The title refers to a remote, uninhabited island in those waters.
6. The Fortune of War (1979)
Setting: 1812 to 1813, the East Indies, the Atlantic and Boston
Aubrey and Maturin reach the Dutch East Indies and take passage for England in a fast dispatch vessel. While they are at sea, the War of 1812 breaks out between Britain and the United States, and the voyage home goes badly wrong. Both men are swept into the war’s first frigate actions, and Maturin’s past as an intelligence agent catches up with him in an American port.
Two real battles frame the story: HMS Java against USS Constitution in December 1812, and HMS Shannon against USS Chesapeake on June 1, 1813. It is the one novel in the series set largely on American soil.
7. The Surgeon’s Mate (1980)
Setting: 1813, Halifax, England, the Baltic and France
The story opens in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the days after a British naval victory, and follows Aubrey, Maturin, and Diana Villiers home across the Atlantic in a mail packet with American privateers on her heels. Back in England, Maturin is handed a delicate task. A Catalan garrison holds a fortified island in the Baltic for Napoleon, and he is the one man who might talk them out of it, so Aubrey carries him north in the sloop HMS Ariel.
The title is a deliberate pun with multiple meanings, and the book explains itself as it goes. Baltic fog, shoals, and diplomacy make a sharp change from the open-ocean novels before it.
8. The Ionian Mission (1981)
Setting: The long 1813 (see the chronology section below), Toulon, and the Ionian Sea
Aubrey commands HMS Worcester, a badly built ship of the line, on the endless blockade of the French fleet at Toulon. It is dull, wearing, unprofitable work, and O’Brian makes the boredom itself fascinating, with shipboard poetry contests and an oratorio in rehearsal. Relief comes with a transfer back to the Surprise and a mission to the Ionian coast, where Aubrey must decide which of three rival Turkish rulers deserves British guns and support.
The blockade chapters are the fullest picture in the series of ordinary fleet life. The second half turns into a study of Ottoman politics, with a hard-fought action at the end.
9. Treason’s Harbour (1983)
Setting: The long 1813, Malta, and the Red Sea
The Surprise is under slow repair in Malta, and Valletta is full of French agents. Maturin recognizes that British intelligence on the island is leaking, and he is drawn to Laura Fielding, a young woman being forced to spy because her husband is a prisoner of war in France. Aubrey, meanwhile, is sent on a secret expedition across the desert to the Red Sea to intercept a galley said to be carrying French silver.
This is the most espionage-heavy book in the first half of the series. The reader knows more than the characters about who the traitor is, and the tension comes from watching them work in the dark.
10. The Far Side of the World (1984)
Setting: The long 1813, Gibraltar, Cape Horn and the Pacific
At Gibraltar, Aubrey receives orders to take the Surprise after the USS Norfolk, an American frigate sent to destroy the British whaling fleet in the Pacific. The pursuit runs down the Atlantic, round Cape Horn, and up to the Galapagos, with Maturin torn between duty and islands full of undescribed species. The Norfolk’s cruise is modeled on the real Pacific raid of USS Essex in 1813.
This is the novel that gave the 2003 film its subtitle and its chase plot. It also carries the author’s note in which O’Brian admits what he has done to the calendar.
11. The Reverse of the Medal (1986)
Setting: The long 1813, the West Indies and London
Aubrey comes home from a long cruise by way of the West Indies. On the road to London, a talkative stranger gives him a confidential tip about the war and the stock market, and Aubrey, never as shrewd on land as at sea, acts on it. The result pulls him into the world of City speculators, lawyers, and government informers, where his courage is no use to him at all.
O’Brian drew the plot from the real Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814, in which Lord Cochrane was tried. The title is an old expression for the other side of a matter, much like the other side of the coin, and this is the darkest book in the series.
12. The Letter of Marque (1988)
Setting: The long 1813, England and the Atlantic
The Surprise goes to sea as a private man-of-war, sailing under a letter of marque, the government license that allows a privately owned ship to take enemy vessels. Aubrey commands her, Maturin is her quiet owner, and the crew is a mix of old shipmates, smugglers, and privateersmen from the West Country port of Shelmerston. Aubrey has a great deal to prove, and he plans a raid bold enough to prove it.
After the gloom of the previous book, this one has the lift of a fresh start. It is among the shortest and most purely enjoyable novels in the sequence.
13. The Thirteen-Gun Salute (1989)
Setting: The long 1813, Lisbon, and the South China Sea
The Surprise sets out for South America, but at Lisbon the plan changes. Aubrey is to take the frigate HMS Diane to Pulo Prabang, a Malay state in the South China Sea, carrying the envoy Edward Fox, who must win a treaty with the Sultan before a rival French mission does. The thirteen guns of the title are the salute Fox is entitled to as the King’s representative.
For Maturin, the voyage means orangutans, a Buddhist temple in a volcanic crater, and old enemies among the French party. It is the first part of a long circumnavigation that runs through the next four books.
14. The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)
Setting: The long 1813, the South China Sea, Java and New South Wales
The novel opens with Aubrey, Maturin, and their crew shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea, building a schooner from the wreckage and short of almost everything. Once they reach Batavia, Governor Raffles finds Aubrey a small 20-gun ship. He renames her the Nutmeg of Consolation, borrowing one of the many titles of the Sultan of Pulo Prabang.
The second half takes the story to the penal colony at Sydney Cove, which O’Brian shows without any softening. Maturin’s delight in Australian wildlife sits beside a hard look at the convict system.
15. The Truelove (1992)
Setting: The long 1813, the South Pacific
This book has two titles. It was published in the UK as Clarissa Oakes and in the US as The Truelove, and they are the same novel, so there is no need to buy both.
The Surprise has barely cleared Sydney when Aubrey discovers that a young woman, a convict named Clarissa, has been smuggled aboard. He must decide what to do with her, and her presence soon divides the officers and sours the mood of the ship. Meanwhile, new orders send him to the Pacific island of Moahu, where two rival chiefs are at war, and a French-backed privateer is taking a hand. The title “Truelove of the US” is a British whaler caught up in the affair.
16. The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)
Setting: The long 1813, the Pacific and Peru
The Surprise is chasing an American privateer, the Franklin, across the South Pacific when the sea turns strange colors and an undersea volcano erupts between the two ships. From there, the voyage continues to Peru, where Maturin has secret work to do among those who want independence from Spain. His errand takes him inland and up into the high Andes.
The title is Homer’s phrase for the sea. The book balances some of the fiercest ship actions in the series with Maturin’s long, cold journey among condors and llamas.
17. The Commodore (1994)
Setting: The long 1813, England, West Africa and Ireland
After years away, Aubrey and Maturin come home to England, and to family news that is not all good. Aubrey is then given a squadron and the temporary rank of commodore, with orders to cruise the West African coast against the slave trade. A second, secret part of his orders concerns a French squadron bound for Ireland.
The novel was first published in the UK in 1994, with the US edition following in 1995. O’Brian writes about the slave ships plainly and without modern speeches, which makes those chapters all the harder to forget.
18. The Yellow Admiral (1996)
Setting: Late 1813 onward, Dorset and the blockade of Brest
Aubrey is at home at Woolcombe, his family estate, fighting a neighbor’s plan to enclose the common land the village depends on. At sea, he commands HMS Bellona on the blockade of Brest, under an admiral who dislikes him and has an interest in the enclosure. With peace in sight, he faces a quieter fear as well.
A yellow admiral was a captain promoted to rear admiral by seniority but given no squadron, which meant retirement in all but name. For an officer with enemies, the end of the war makes that fate a real possibility. Here, the series returns to the real calendar.
19. The Hundred Days (1998)
Setting: 1815, Gibraltar, the Adriatic and North Africa
Napoleon has escaped from Elba, and Europe is at war again. Aubrey, commanding a squadron out of Gibraltar, is ordered into the Adriatic to destroy the shipyards building vessels for Bonaparte’s supporters. Maturin learns of a plan to pay Muslim mercenaries with gold shipped from North Africa, a force meant to stop the allied armies from joining up, and the two missions become one.
The title names the period between Napoleon’s return and his final defeat in June 1815. It is a somber book in places, with both men feeling their years.
20. Blue at the Mizzen (1999)
Setting: After Waterloo, 1815 onward, the Atlantic and Chile
Napoleon is beaten, and the navy is paying off ships and sending officers ashore. Aubrey, still a post captain, takes the Surprise out again on what is officially a survey of the Chilean coast. In practice, he and Maturin are there to help the Chileans who are fighting for independence from Spain.
The title refers to the blue flag flown at the mizzen mast by a rear admiral of the blue, the lowest flag rank in the navy, and the step Aubrey has wanted all his life. This is the last novel O’Brian finished, and the only one set wholly after the Napoleonic Wars.
21. The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004)
Setting: Shortly after book 20, South America and the South Atlantic
O’Brian was at work on his 21st novel when he died in January 2000. What survives is roughly three chapters in typescript, breaking off in the middle of a sentence, and the published book prints them alongside a facsimile of his handwritten draft, which runs a little further. It was issued by HarperCollins in the UK as The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey and by W. W. Norton in the US as 21.
The book includes an afterword by Richard Snow, the critic whose 1991 review did so much for the series in America. Treat it as a postscript for readers who have finished the other 20 and cannot quite let go.
Chronological Order vs Publication Order
For the Aubrey-Maturin novels, publication order and story order are the same thing. Book two follows book one, book three follows book two, and no later novel jumps back to fill in an earlier period. There is only one sensible way to read them.
What is unusual is how the series treats the calendar. The first six novels move quickly, from April 1800 to June 1, 1813, the date of the real fight between HMS Shannon and USS Chesapeake that ends The Fortune of War. At that point O’Brian was running out of war, with Napoleon’s first abdication less than a year away.
His answer was to slow time down. The eleven novels from The Surgeon’s Mate to The Commodore contain several years’ worth of voyages, including a full trip around the world, yet on the historical calendar, they all fit inside the second half of 1813. O’Brian owned up to this in his author’s note to The Far Side of the World, saying that if he had known how many books would follow the first, he would have started the story earlier, and asking readers to accept hypothetical years, which he labeled 1812a and 1812b.
The Yellow Admiral picks up the real calendar again in late 1813, The Hundred Days covers Napoleon’s return in 1815, and Blue at the Mizzen takes place after Waterloo. This is why the entries above describe books 8 to 17 as set in “the long 1813”.
Our recommendation: read in publication order and do not try to make the dates add up. The characters age, their children grow, and the seasons turn as if years were passing, and that is how the story is meant to be felt.
Companion Novels and Short Stories
There are no Aubrey-Maturin short stories or official spin-off novels. There are, however, two earlier sea novels by O’Brian and a shelf of excellent companion books.
The precursors. Before Aubrey and Maturin, O’Brian wrote two novels about Commodore George Anson’s voyage around the world in the 1740s. The Golden Ocean (1956) follows a young Irish midshipman, Peter Palafox, aboard Anson’s flagship Centurion. The Unknown Shore (1959) covers the same expedition from HMS Wager, the ship that was wrecked on the coast of Chile.
The Unknown Shore is the one to read if you want to see the series being born. Its two leads, the cheerful midshipman Jack Byron and the unworldly surgeon’s mate Tobias Barrow, are widely seen as first sketches of Aubrey and Maturin. Neither book is part of the series, and both can be read at any time.
The reference books. A Sea of Words by Dean King, with John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes, is a lexicon of the naval, medical, and period vocabulary in the novels, and the single most useful thing to keep beside you. Harbors and High Seas, by King and Hattendorf, is an atlas and geographical guide that maps the voyages book by book.
O’Brian’s own Men-of-War: Life in Nelson’s Navy (1974) is a short illustrated introduction to the ships, guns, and daily routine of the period. It answers most of a new reader’s practical questions in under a hundred pages.
The cookbook. Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, by the mother and daughter team Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas, recreates the dishes eaten in the novels, from lobscouse to the many suet puddings Aubrey loves. The authors cooked every recipe themselves, and O’Brian wrote the foreword.
About the Aubrey-Maturin Series
Series Overview
The series began as a commission. After C.S. Forester died in 1966, the American publisher J. B. Lippincott suggested that O’Brian write a naval novel of the Napoleonic period, and Master and Commander was the result. Collins published the books in Britain from 1970, but American publication lapsed after Desolation Island until Starling Lawrence of W. W. Norton picked the series up at the end of the 1980s, and the Norton editions made O’Brian famous.
At the center are two men who could hardly be less alike. Jack Aubrey is big, cheerful, brilliant at sea, and easily cheated on land. Stephen Maturin is a small, secretive Irish-Catalan physician, a naturalist of real distinction, and an unpaid agent for British naval intelligence. Aubrey’s career, with its daring successes and painful reverses, was inspired by that of the real Thomas Cochrane and other frigate captains of the day.
The books are often compared to Jane Austen, one of O’Brian’s own favorite writers, as much as to other sea stories. The wars supply the plot, but the real subject is how people of that time talked, married, quarreled, played music, and kept their word.
What Makes Aubrey-Maturin Special
- One long novel. The 20 books read as a single story in installments, with characters who change, age, and carry their histories with them.
- A great literary friendship. Aubrey and Maturin disagree about politics, religion, punctuality, and puns, and their duets for violin and cello are the heartbeat of the series.
- Period language that works. O’Brian writes in a voice close to the early 19th century, and after a few chapters, it stops feeling like effort.
- Real history underneath. Many actions are drawn from logbooks, official letters, and memoirs of the time and then assigned to fictional ships.
- More than the navy. Natural history, medicine, espionage, music, food, and money get as much attention as broadsides.
- Humour. Aubrey’s mangled proverbs and Maturin’s hopelessness with anything nautical are funny for 20 books running.
The series belongs on any list of the best historical fiction series, and it is the benchmark for naval historical fiction.
Where to Start with Aubrey-Maturin
New to the Series?
Start with Master and Commander. It introduces both men on the first page, shows the friendship forming, and teaches you the ship at the same pace Maturin learns it. There is no better way in.
Be ready for a slow first hundred pages. O’Brian does not stop to explain a studding sail or a cross-catharpin, and you are not expected to understand every term, any more than Maturin does. Let the sailing language wash past and follow the people.
If you would rather buy once, The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels boxed set holds all 20 novels and the unfinished 21st in five hardback volumes. It suits readers who already know they like the books, or who are buying a gift for someone who does.
Can You Start Elsewhere?
You can, but you will lose something. Each novel has its own voyage and its own ending, so a later book is readable alone, yet the personal stories run straight through, and later volumes take earlier events for granted. Starting in the middle also means meeting spoilers for the first half.
Some readers who bounce off the opening of book one have better luck trying HMS Surprise as a sample and then going back to the beginning. If you do that, return to Master and Commander afterward and read straight through. New to the genre altogether? Our guide to historical fiction for beginners suggests some gentler starting points.
About the Author: Patrick O’Brian
Patrick O’Brian was born Richard Patrick Russ on December 12, 1914, in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, and changed his surname to O’Brian in 1945. For decades, reviewers assumed he was Irish, and he did nothing to correct them. In 1949, he and his wife, Mary, settled in Collioure, a fishing town in southern France, where he lived and wrote for almost 50 years.
He was not a naval man. During the Second World War, he drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz, and he later said he had worked in intelligence. His command of the Georgian navy came from years of reading logbooks, letters, memoirs, and Admiralty records. Alongside the novels, he wrote a major biography of Picasso and a life of the naturalist Joseph Banks, and he was a busy translator from French, whose work included books by Simone de Beauvoir and the prison memoir Papillon.
Recognition came late. In 1995, he was the first winner of the Heywood Hill Literary Prize and was appointed CBE; in 1997, Trinity College Dublin awarded him an honorary doctorate. He died in Dublin on January 2, 2000, and is buried in Collioure. The Booker Prizes author page gives a short official summary of his career, and Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed by Dean King is the first full biography.
For his other novels, short stories, and nonfiction, see our full Patrick O’Brian author guide.
Historical Context: The Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars
The novels open in 1800, in the last years of the French Revolutionary Wars, and run through the Napoleonic Wars to Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815. For most of that time, Napoleon was master of the European mainland, and Britain’s main weapon against him was its navy. The navy blockaded French ports, protected trade, carried armies, and fought for colonies on the other side of the world.
That global reach is why the series travels so widely. The Mauritius campaign, the wreck of British hopes against American frigates in the War of 1812, the blockades of Toulon and Brest, and the campaign against the slave trade off West Africa were all real, and O’Brian places his fictional ships inside them. Real people appear, too, among them Governor Bligh, Stamford Raffles, and Admiral Linois.
O’Brian is equally exact about how the Navy worked. Promotion to post captain depended on patronage as well as merit, and after that, an officer climbed toward flag rank by seniority alone. Prize money from captured ships could make a captain rich or leave him tied up in the courts for years, and both happen to Aubrey.
On accuracy, the short version is that the settings, ships, language, and procedures are as reliable as historical fiction gets, while the heroes and most of their ships are invented. O’Brian’s one open liberty is the stretched calendar described above. For more on how novelists balance fact and invention, see what makes historical fiction accurate, or browse other eras in our time periods index.
Similar Series You’ll Love
1. Hornblower by C.S. Forester
The series that started the genre, and the reason O’Brian was asked to write his. Forester wrote eleven Hornblower novels between 1937 and 1967, the last of them unfinished, following one officer from midshipman to admiral. They are faster, plainer, and more plot-driven than O’Brian, with a hero who doubts himself constantly.
Begin with Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950), the first book in story order. Our Hornblower reading order explains the difference between publication and chronological order.
2. Sharpe by Bernard Cornwell
The same wars, fought on land. Bernard Cornwell follows Richard Sharpe, a soldier raised from the ranks, through India, the Peninsular War, and Waterloo, in a series that began in 1981 and is still growing. Where O’Brian is leisurely, Cornwell is all momentum, and his battle writing is superb.
Sharpe’s Tiger (1997), set in India in 1799, is the first book in story order. See the Sharpe series reading order for the full list.
3. Kydd by Julian Stockwin
Julian Stockwin served in the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy before he turned to fiction, and it shows. His hero, Thomas Kydd, is a young wigmaker from Guildford who is pressed into the navy as a landsman, so the early books show the war from the lower deck. That is a view O’Brian’s officers rarely give.
The series opens with Kydd (2001) and runs to more than two dozen novels. The full sequence is in our Kydd reading order.
4. Bolitho by Alexander Kent
Alexander Kent was the pen name of Douglas Reeman (1924 to 2017), who served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War. His 30 Bolitho novels, published between 1968 and 2011, follow the Cornish officer Richard Bolitho and later his nephew Adam, across a story that runs from 1768 to 1819. They are more romantic and more direct than O’Brian, with a great deal of action.
To Glory We Steer (1968) was the first to be published and makes a good starting point. Our Bolitho reading order sets out the story order.
5. Ramage by Dudley Pope
Dudley Pope was a naval historian before he was a novelist, and it was C.S. Forester who encouraged him to try fiction. The result was 18 novels, published between 1965 and 1989, about Lord Nicholas Ramage, a young officer whose adventures draw on real incidents of the period. The series begins with Ramage (1965).
Pope sits between Forester and O’Brian in style. The plots are brisk, and the seamanship is described by a man who spent much of his life living on boats.
6. Temeraire by Naomi Novik
For something different, Naomi Novik replays the Napoleonic Wars with an air force of dragons. Her hero, William Laurence, is a Royal Navy captain who takes a French ship carrying a dragon egg, and his formal manners and sense of duty will feel familiar to O’Brian readers. The nine novels appeared between 2006 and 2016.
The first is His Majesty’s Dragon, published in the UK as Temeraire. The Temeraire series reading order covers all nine.
Further afield. If what you love is a long saga with the same people over decades, the Poldark novels cover Cornwall from 1783 to 1820, the same years seen from the shore. If it is the wit, the Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser do for the Victorian army what O’Brian does for the Georgian navy, with a far less admirable hero. Our list of the best military historical fiction has more.
Adaptations
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
The only screen adaptation is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, directed by Peter Weir, based on a script he wrote with John Collee. Russell Crowe plays Jack Aubrey and Paul Bettany plays Stephen Maturin. It was released in November 2003.
The film draws on more than one novel. Its main plot, a long chase around Cape Horn to the Pacific and the Galapagos, comes from the tenth book, with scenes and characters borrowed from others, including the first.
The biggest change is the enemy. In the novel, the Surprise hunts the American frigate USS Norfolk during the War of 1812. The film moves the story back to 1805 and makes the quarry a French privateer, the Acheron. Maturin’s work as an intelligence agent is also left out almost entirely.
The film received ten nominations at the 76th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two: Cinematography for Russell Boyd and Sound Editing for Richard King. The full list is on the Academy’s page for that ceremony. It took about $212 million worldwide against a reported budget of $150 million, and no sequel followed.
In 2021, a second film, a prequel based on the first novel, was reported to be in development at 20th Century Studios with Patrick Ness writing the script. Nothing has reached cinemas, so the 2003 film remains the only one. It is a fine place to get a feel for the world of the books, as long as you expect a different plot.
Radio
Several of the novels have also been dramatized for British radio. Master and Commander was dramatized in 1995, with Michael Troughton as Aubrey and Nigel Anthony as Maturin. Later adaptations of four more of the early novels, made between 2008 and 2018, starred David Robb and Richard Dillane.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books are in the Aubrey-Maturin series?
There are 20 completed novels, published between 1969 and 1999. A 21st book, published in 2004, contains the opening chapters of the novel Patrick O’Brian was writing when he died. Most readers count the series as 20 books plus a fragment.
Do I need to read the Aubrey-Maturin books in order?
Yes, reading in publication order is strongly recommended. The novels tell one continuous story, and the friendships, marriages, careers, and intelligence plots carry over from book to book. Each novel has its own voyage, but later books assume you know what happened earlier.
What is the correct Aubrey-Maturin reading order?
The order is: Master and Commander, Post Captain, HMS Surprise, The Mauritius Command, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War, The Surgeon’s Mate, The Ionian Mission, Treason’s Harbour, The Far Side of the World, The Reverse of the Medal, The Letter of Marque, The Thirteen-Gun Salute, The Nutmeg of Consolation, The Truelove (UK title Clarissa Oakes), The Wine-Dark Sea, The Commodore, The Yellow Admiral, The Hundred Days and Blue at the Mizzen. The unfinished 21st book comes last.
Is there a chronological order that differs from publication order?
No. The books were published in the same order as the story they tell, so there is only one reading order. The one oddity is that the middle of the series stretches the year 1813 to hold several years of adventures, which Patrick O’Brian acknowledged in an author’s note.
Are The Truelove and Clarissa Oakes the same book?
Yes. The fifteenth novel was published as Clarissa Oakes in the UK and as The Truelove in the US. The text is the same, so you only need one of them.
What is the Aubrey-Maturin series about?
It follows the friendship between Jack Aubrey, a Royal Navy officer, and Stephen Maturin, a ship’s surgeon, naturalist, and intelligence agent, during the wars against Napoleon. The books combine sea battles and long voyages with espionage, natural history, music, and life ashore in Georgian England. At heart, it is the story of two very different men over many years.
Is the Aubrey-Maturin series historically accurate?
The ships, language, naval procedures, and broader events are closely researched, and many actions are based on real engagements recorded in logbooks and letters of the time. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are invented, although Aubrey’s career was inspired by the real Thomas Cochrane and other frigate captains. The main liberty Patrick O’Brian took was with the calendar in the middle of the series.
How long does it take to read the whole series?
It is a long commitment. The complete five-volume edition, which includes all 20 novels and the unfinished 21st, runs to more than 7,000 pages. Reading one novel every week or two, the series takes most of a year, and many readers happily take longer.
Are the Aubrey-Maturin books hard to read?
The opening of Master and Commander can be demanding because the sailing terms are not explained, and the style echoes the early 19th century. You are not expected to follow every nautical detail, and Stephen Maturin never does either. Most readers find that the language becomes natural within a book or two, and a companion lexicon can help.
Is the series suitable for younger readers?
The books are written for adults, and the main hurdle for younger readers is the vocabulary and the unhurried pace. The content includes battle wounds, surgery, flogging, and adult relationships, handled without sensationalism. Confident older teenagers who enjoy classic novels can manage them well.
Can any of the books be read as a standalone?
Each novel has a self-contained voyage with a beginning and an end, so any one of them can be followed on its own. You will miss the background of the characters’ private lives, and later books reveal what happened in earlier ones. For that reason, the first book is still the best standalone to try.
Will there be more Aubrey-Maturin books?
No. Patrick O’Brian died on January 2, 2000, leaving the 21st novel unfinished, and the chapters he completed were published in 2004. No other writer has continued the series.
Are the books available as ebooks and audiobooks?
Yes. All the novels are available as ebooks and in unabridged audio. The recordings by Patrick Tull and Simon Vance are the best-known, and hearing the naval terms spoken aloud helps many new readers.
How is the film different from the books?
The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World takes its chase plot mainly from the tenth novel and adds material from others. It moves the story to 1805 and changes the enemy from an American frigate to a French privateer. It also leaves out most of Stephen Maturin’s intelligence work.
Should I read the unfinished 21st book?
Read it last, and only if you want to. It contains about three chapters, printed alongside a facsimile of the author’s handwritten draft, and it stops mid-sentence. Blue at the Mizzen works well as an ending, so the fragment is a bonus for devoted readers.
Conclusion
The Aubrey-Maturin novels ask for patience at the start and repay it many times over. Twenty books in, readers know Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin as well as they know their own friends, and the Georgian navy has become a place they can find their way around.
Begin with Master and Commander, keep going in publication order, and do not worry about the rigging. If the first book wins you over, the boxed set of the complete novels is the tidy way to own the rest.
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