Horatio Hornblower Bd.1: Fähnrich Hornblower [Hardcover]

C. S. Forester (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: Michael Joseph (1977)
• Language: German
• ISBN-10: 0071801871
• ISBN-13: 978-0071801874
• ASIN: 0718101871
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,602,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

76 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mental and Physical Shape of the Hornblower Plots!, December 21, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hornblower Companion (Paperback)

I would strongly recommend this book for any fan of the Hornblower novels.

I have written my review for someone who has read most or all of the Hornblower novels. If you have not read most of the novels and plan to, do not read the rest of this review. This review may inadvertently spoil a future story for you, although I tried to avoid doing that.

When I found this book, I did not know what to expect. I had noticed that some reviewers of the Horatio Hornblower novels seemed to have background on Forester's writing influences that I wished I had. I didn't know that those references were contained in an extended essay contained in the second half of this book, described as Author's Personal Notes, 1963, and Postscript, dated 1964. What a treat!

Mr. Forester begins by showing a page of the long hand he used to draft the books. From there, he goes on to describe the general writing process that he favored for creating his novels. Then, he turns to the origins of Hornblower in his thinking. The book becomes even more fascinating as he explains the ways he developed each of the stories in the saga. I had always wondered why he did this in such an scattered chronology, but the essay makes it clear what the purposes were behind all of this seeming haphazardness. Knowing how tight many of the scrapes are into which Hornblower fell, you will marvel at how much thinking went into developing those fascinating scenarios. Mr. Forester also keeps a running background of the world events and activities in his own life (including illnesses) that played a role in his thinking. The postscript describes the development of the plot for the unfinished final novel, Hornblower During the Crisis.

After reading the essay, I was pleased to realize that I could now understand many of the quirks in the novels. If you read the novels in order, his wife, Maria, barely exists. Yet in Beat to Quarters, you get all kinds of development of Lady Barbara as a character. Forester notes that Maria was an afterthought to an assumption that Hornblower was married in Beat to Quarters, and Mr. Forester treated poor Maria in just that way when he later wrote her in as a character.

In the novels, there are many wonderful references to the Naval Chronicle, written by ships' officers to be read by other ships' officers, seamen and their families. Little did I know that reading old editions of the Chronicle was an important part of Mr. Forester's developing fascination with creating a fictional British naval officer hero for the Napoleonic years.

In the first half of the book, you get a series of simple maps which employ the place names used in the relevant novels to locate where key events took place in each story. You can enjoy these maps while reading the novels, or refer to them to refresh your mind about the plots after you have not read the books in some time. This arrangement makes sense, so that you will not learn too much about what happens in the future to Hornblower if you read the books in the chronological order of Hornblower's fictional life, beginning with Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. The first map is an overview of all the routes of all Hornblower's fictional voyages. The subsequent twenty-nine maps go through each book in order of the action. I wish I had had these maps available while I was reading Hornblower and the Hotspur and Ship of the Line. They would have added to my enjoyment. The maps for the canal and the Thames for Hornblower and the Atropos are very interesting as well.

Where else would it help to know the lay of the land and the issues involved before launching forward? Almost everywhere, I think.

Before blundering around without a clue, be sure to check that the resources you need are not available to you!

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Having, April 22, 1999

By 

T. Whigham (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hornblower Companion (Paperback)

I consider this to be an indispensable companion to the C.S. Forester novels and the television series. It helps the casual fan of the Hornblower series to follow the action as our hero progresses along. Hard-core fans for Forester will really appreciate the details that went into making the Companion, and casual fans will develop a better sense of how things flow along in the novels.

Too bad the Naval Institute Press, one of the better publishers out there, decided to put it on backorder so soon. Hopefully, with the recent television series generating interest, the book will be re-released.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" for the true Hornblower afficionado., November 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hornblower Companion (Hardcover)

This book has a collection of maps and diagrams representing in pictures what Forester describes in prose in the Hornblower series. Forester often described battles and campaigns in now-obscure placenames, appropriate to the era, but not always findable in a modern atlas. This serves as sort of a Historical Atlas. Also has sailing ship layouts and descriptions of Napoleanic-era technology for the modern reader. (Think of someone reading Tom Clancy in 200 years without reference material).

Book ALSO contains what is elsewhere described as "Long Before Forty", Forester's autobiographical look at becoming a writer.