O'Brian, Patrick
Encyclopedia article; The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2009
Collections:
Religious Studies, Education, Psychology, History, Literature, Philosophy, Entire Library
OBRIAN, PATRICK 1914 2000, British novelist, b. near London as Richard Patrick Russ. He changed his name in 1945 and after World War II settled...By the 1980s OBrian was a British literary cult figure, sometimes compared to Englands greatest novelists. Not published in the United States until the 1990s, his books soon achieved a huge readership there. OBrian also wrote such nonfiction works as a study of life in the early 19th-century English navy (1974) and biographies of Picasso (1976) and Joseph Banks (1986) and was a talented translator. Two of OBrians novels...of a film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), directed by Peter Weir . See biography by D. Kean (2000); studies by A. E. Cunningham, ed. (1994), D. Kean (1995 and 1996...