January 7, 2000


          Writer Patrick O'Brian Dies at 85


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          Filed at 3:21 p.m. EST

          By The Associated Press

          LONDON (AP) -- Patrick O'Brian, whose celebrated novels of 19th
          century seafaring won praise from critics and the loyalty of 
legions of
          readers, has died. He was 85. 

          O'Brian died in Dublin, Ireland, where he had been working on a book
          for several weeks at Trinity College. The cause of death was not 
given
          and there were conflicting reports of the date. 

          The British Embassy in Paris said O'Brian died Tuesday, but 
newspapers
          and the news agency Press Association said he died Sunday. O'Brian
          had lived in France since 1949. 

          O'Brian's major work was a 20-volume series set in the Royal Navy
          during the Napoleonic wars. 

          A deep knowledge of naval history and 19th century life enabled him 
to
          evoke a time and place so vividly that, in this era of supersonic 
jets and
          smart bombs, his readers were gripped by the slow-motion suspense of
          sea battles fought under sail. 

          The series, begun in 1969 with ``Master and Commander,'' is the 
story
          of the friendship between a bold and ambitious navy officer, Jack
          Aubrey, and the ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, a naturalist and 
secret
          agent who doesn't much like sailing. 

          Although the books were well-reviewed and found an enthusiastic
          readership from the start, it wasn't until the 1990s that they 
achieved
          wide recognition abroad and were lifted out of the ``historical 
fiction''
          genre in which they generally were reviewed. 

          In 1991, a New York Times critic called O'Brian ``the best novelist 
you
          have never heard of.'' 

          ``Patrick O'Brian has written great and enduring literature which 
happens
          to be set largely at sea,'' the Sunday Telegraph wrote in 1997, 
praising
          ``the intensity of characterization, the complex elegance of the 
plotting,
          and the brilliance of the writing.'' 

          O'Brian also proved that, in the hands of a skilled writer, 
specialist
          language need not be an obstacle to understanding. Readers who can't
          remember which side of a ship is starboard still can feel the 
frantic activity
          on deck as the sails unfurl and catch the wind, and the excitement 
as a
          man-of-war turns to engage the enemy. 

          A lexicon explaining O'Brian's nautical terminology was published, 
but
          O'Brian didn't think definitions important. 

          ``Ignorance of the cross-catharpins is not necessarily fatal,'' he 
once said.
          ``Explanation almost certainly would be.'' 

          O'Brian's fans range from actor Charlton Heston to critic John 
Bayley, a
          former Oxford professor of literature who wrote that O'Brian's
          ``originality consists in the unpretentious use he makes of 
(history) to
          invent a new style of fiction.'' 

          ``No other writer,'' Bayley wrote, ``not even Melville, has 
described the
          whale and the wandering albatross with O'Brian's studious and yet 
lyrical
          accuracy.'' 

          O'Brian guarded his privacy, and in his few interviews resisted 
questions
          about his personal life. 

          He was born Dec. 12, 1914, in Chalfont St. Peter, west of London, 
and
          it wasn't until 1998 that he was revealed to be the son of an 
English
          doctor and not an Irishman as had been widely believed, the Daily
          Telegraph said in an obituary Friday. 

          The newspaper said O'Brian was born Richard Patrick Russ, but
          changed his name in 1945. During his school years, he was 
frequently ill,
          spending much time reading. His writing career began at age 15, 
when he
          published a book about the union of a giant panda and a snow 
leopard. 

          During World War II, O'Brian drove ambulances and worked briefly
          with Britain's Political Intelligence Department. 

          In 1949, he and his second wife, Mary, moved to Collioure, southern
          France. His first seafaring novel was ``The Golden Ocean'' in 1956,
          about a Pacific expedition. 

          O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series was already well under way in 
Britain
          by the beginning of the 1990s, when editor Starling Lawrence of the
          American publisher W.W. Norton chanced to read one on a flight 
home. 

          The rest, as they say, is publishing history. 

          Several years ago, the writer said he would end the series with the 
20th
          book, but last month he said he was working on volume 21, the Daily
          Telegraph reported. 

          O'Brian also wrote biographies of Picasso and naturalist Sir Joseph
          Banks. A linguist, he translated the work of French writers Simone 
de
          Beauvoir and Colette. 

          O'Brian was made a Commander of the Order of British Empire in 1995.

          Funeral plans were not announced. He is survived by a son, Richard,
          from his first marriage.