The Patrick O'Brian Muster Book

"any library serving Patrick O'Brian fans will want this title"-Booklist; "excellent"-ARBA; "I thought Anthony Gary Brown's companion to the Aubrey-Maturin novels as indispensable as a mainmast or a compass for any reader who would put to sea in their company"-Lewis Lapham, Harper's Magazine; "what an astonishing piece of work it is! And a valuable one, too. I am very glad to have [this] book to draw on, and I know that other O'Brian enthusiasts will be as well"-Richard F. Snow, American Heritage Magazine; "offers some interesting answers...insightful introduction...an ambitious listing, with accompanying notes, of all the characters and ships...brings to the task an erudition that is a worthy match for O'Brian's...one of those reference works that is genuinely difficult to put down, with one entry cross-referencing to another in an enthralling intellectual trail...whether used as a companion to the novels or as a work of reference in its own right, this book is a most useful and enjoyable tool...clear, sharp typeface...includes a useful annotated bibliography and a guide to the complex chronology of the novels"-Colin White, The Journal of the Canadian Nautical Research Society; "for all aficionados...outstanding...increases the joy of reading O'Brian...strongly recommended"-Catholic Library World; "Brown has stepped up to lend others a hand...invaluable as much for its reference use as its wit, Brown's book deserves a place on the shelf with O'Brian's corpus....before setting sail, it's important to chart your course, and Dr. Brown has made that task immensely simpler and more pleasurable" -Rob Lightner, Amazon.com Editorial Review; "useful for casual readers and for ardent fans, this dictionary is an in-depth guide to many factual and fictional aspects of the Aubrey-Maturin series"-ARBA; "a dictionary to explain the enormous number of references, both factual and fictional, found" -Reference Reviews; "describes every object and person one comes across in the books...exhaustive...impressive"-The Herald (Rock Hill, South Carolina); "splendid...will enjoy it very much" -The Rt. Hon. Lord William Waldegrave of North Hill.