BROWN ON RESOLUTION [Hardcover]

C. S. FORESTER (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD; Reprint edition (1946)
• ASIN: B0012KBPZG
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

More About the Author

C. S. Forester (1899-1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the "Bismarck," and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes.

Born Cecil Louis Troughton Smith in Cairo, Egypt, Forester grew up in London. At the start of World War II he traveled on behalf of the British government to America, where he produced propaganda encouraging the United States to remain on Britain's side. After the War, Forester remained in America and made Berkeley, California, his home.

The character of Horatio Hornblower was born after Forester was called to Hollywood to write a pirate film. While the script was being drafted, another studio released Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, based on the same historical incidents about which Forester was writing. Rather than seek another movie project, and to avoid an impending paternity suit, Forester jumped aboard a freighter bound for England. By the end of the voyage he had outlined Beat to the Quarters, which introduced the now legendary character Hornblower, Bush, and Lady Barbara.

Forester died in 1966 while working on Hornblower During the Crisis.

Back Bay's editions of the Hornblower novels are numbered according to the chronology of Hornblower's life and career, not according to the sequence in which they were written. The series is comprised of the following titles:


Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
Lieutenant Hornblower
Hornblower and the Hotspur
Hornblower During the Crisis
Hornblower and the Atropos
Beat to Quarters
Ship of the Line
Flying Colours
Commodore Hornblower
Lord Hornblower
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brown on Resolution is C. S. Forester's Best Book, December 10, 2003

By 

Michael F. Doran (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brown on Resolution (Paperback)

While I saw the film version of this book during the 1950s, I only realized that the movie was derived from one of C. S. Forester's early works when I discovered a tattered paperback using the American edition title of "Singlehanded" on a remainder table. For $.25 I was able to read a masterpiece now almost forgotten, and all the more amazing because of how young Forester was when he wrote it -- 27.

The story of a brief affair yielding an illegitimate son seemed an odd tale for Forester at any age, but as with most of his other books the writing itself was so good that I held on for the first half of the book. It turned out that there was a relation between the naval officer father mostly in the nearly forgotten background and the destiny of the son, who joins the Royal Navy and serves as a common sailor. As World War I starts, his ship is destroyed in the Pacific Ocean by a German cruiser and he is one of three survivors picked up by the victors. The cruiser retires into a Galapagos haven for repairs, the young sailor escapes with a rifle, and manages to hold up repairs long enough for the Naval officer father's task force to catch the German, with the father and son never knowing of each other's existence.

This is one of the few true irony novels ever written, formed in the literary round, and possessed of truly superb craftsmanship at every level. Any serious reader should have a copy on their shelves.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and tragic tale, February 25, 2007

By 

Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Brown on Resolution (Paperback)

Forester warns you in the first line of this book not to expect a happy ending: it opens with the words "Leading Seaman Albert Brown lay dying on Resolution."

About the only similarities with the author's Hornblower books is that both are very well written and both include a masterly depiction of war at sea.

The book tells the story of the life of Albert Brown from conception to the single handed battle he fights against the German armoured cruiser "Zeithen" at the start of tbe First World War. The book has also been published under the title "Single Handed."

"Brown on Resolution" is a story about heroism and duty, on the part of Albert Brown himself and the mother who throws away what could have been a comfortable middle class life to raise him. It also has a deeply ironic message about the difference between success and glory: Brown strikes a great blow for his country, but in circumstances which mean that neither he nor anyone back home ever knows it. The last sentence of the book is even more moving than the first: I won't quote it in full to avoid spoiling the tale but it includes the words "No one would ever know".

This book inspired the film "Forever England" which was one of the first to star Sir John Mills. Both book and film came out between the first and second world wars. Interestingly, even all those years ago the film industry could take the idea of a tragic ending but not the idea that nobody knows what the hero has done, so they slightly modified the final scene. If you want to know how, you'll have to read the book and watch the film.

It also inspired the later film "Sailor of the King" which was made after WWII; but this time the film industry meddled much more extensively with the story and included a happy ending.

If you are into sea stories or tales of heroism, and you ever see a copy of this book in a bookshop or a library, grab it at once. I originally read an ancient copy in the school library when I was about 12, then bought a copy of the paperback which I found for sale in a cafe when it was reprinted 30 years ago, and those are almost the only copies of this book that I've ever seen.

If you want to read a more upbeat C.S. Forester story of war at sea in the 20th Century, there are three which I can particularly recommend. These are "The Good Shepherd" which is about a convoy escort mission during the battle of the Atlantic; "The man in the yellow raft" about action in a US destroyer during the Pacific war; and best of all "The Ship" which is an absolutely brilliant account of a light cruiser in action while defending a Malta convoy against greatly superior forces.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Resolve, February 4, 2001

By 

Victoria Crane (Baxley, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown on Resolution (Hardcover)

Forester's novel set in the first world war War is about the absolute resolve of a mother and her son. The mother that her son will become a naval hero, the son that he will do his duty. Duty over all. No matter what the concequences. Single handedly he contrives the destruction of a German cruiser. The novel is intense, the descriptions exacting. But no happy ending. Made into the 1953 movie "Sailor of the King" with a happier ending and a less detailed plot.