#000504
Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian
Dean King with John B. Hattendorf
A companion volume for readers navigating Patrick O'Brian's beloved Aubrey–Maturin sea novels, *Harbors and High Seas* maps the voyages of Captain Jack Aubrey and the surgeon-spy Stephen Maturin book by book. Dean King supplies chapter summaries and commentary on key places; naval historian John B. Hattendorf explains the winds, currents and patterns of the age of sail that shaped where the characters could go and how; and cartographer William Clipson provides the maps. The result is part atlas, part gazetteer, part reader's guide — a way to follow the *Surprise* around Cape Horn or across the Indian Ocean without losing the thread. It is unabashedly a book for devotees rather than newcomers, and for anyone curious about seafaring in the Napoleonic era. Read it with the novels open beside you.
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The author
Dean King is an American biographer and narrative-nonfiction writer, later known for Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud, who built a small industry of reference works around Patrick O'Brian, including the character-and-glossary companion A Sea of Words. His collaborator here, John B. Hattendorf, was for decades the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College, which lends the winds-and-currents material real authority.
The book
First published in 1996, the guide devotes a chapter to each novel — a plot summary, notes on the places visited, and one or more custom maps tracing the routes. It grew across editions as O'Brian added books, culminating in a "Complete" third edition covering the full series.
How to read it
This is reference, not a book to read straight through: keep it at your elbow while working through the novels. Fans consider it an indispensable aid to O'Brian's dense nautical geography; readers who have not started the series will find little reason to pick it up first.
For more context
Pair it with King's A Sea of Words and, of course, with the twenty Aubrey–Maturin novels themselves.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Dean King with John B. Hattendorf
- Publisher
- Henry Holt
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1996
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Maritime
- Location
- Colorado