O'Brian, Patrick

(born Dec. 12, 1914, near London, Eng.—died Jan.

2, 2000, Dublin, Ire.) British writer. He was the eighth of nine children; an early marriage ended in divorce, and after World War II he married again, changed his name, and moved to a small, secluded coastal town in France near the Spanish border. He received little critical notice until age 54, when he began publishing his 18th-century seafaring series featuring Capt. Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin; it eventually numbered 20 books (1969–99) and was compared with the works of Herman Melville, Anthony Trollope, and Marcel Proust.