O'Brian, Patrick (1914-2000)
Collection of signed letters to Edwin Moore, 1992-1999
16 autograph letters signed and one typed letter signed, all on one or both sides of a single sheet of O'Brian's stationery with Correch d'en Baus letterhead, 20.8 x 14.6cm (except for one letter, written on Brooks's notepaper), one autograph letter written in blue ballpoint, the rest in black ink, 10 retaining original autograph envelope, early letters signed ‘Patrick O’Brian', later letters signed ‘Patrick’, one letter hole-punched along one side, one letter partially water-stained causing ink of a few words to run (17)
The most extensive collection of Patrick O’Brian letters apparently ever offered on the open market, providing a rare window onto the final years of this most enigmatic of authors, rich in references to the progress of his writing and to literary matters, and written with a watchful politeness, leavened with self-deprecating humour and affectations of curmudgeonly ennui.The recipient Edwin Moore was a senior non-fiction editor at HarperCollins in Glasgow from 1986 until 2004. He first wrote to Patrick O’Brian in 1992 to solicit a preface for a new edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. O’Brian’s letter of acceptance dated 22nd June is the first letter in the present correspondence, and a letter which follows soon after includes a delightful comparison between Austen’s work and the Aubrey-Maturin novels (‘Mrs Norris and Mrs Williams would indeed have made a pretty pair; prettier still if one came home from a long and arduous cruise to find them firmly installed'), as well as a characteristically laconic autobiographical summary.Over the coming years Edwin took care to send O’Brian copies of newly published Collins titles which he thought might be of interest to him, with O’Brian making attentive recommendations for subsequent editions and even suggestions for entirely new projects. In one letter O’Brian proposes Richard Ollard as editor of an anthology of Frederick Marryat (the postscript noting that ‘Aubrey's present domestic life is not quite what it seemed from the far side of the world’), while in his next suggesting a selection of travel accounts from Hakluyt and other early English authors as ‘fun for a scholarly armchair traveller to compile'. While O’Brian is generous with his praise where he feels it is deserved, Simon Schama being ‘a brilliant creature (in spite of the dreadful photograph)’, he does not try to feign interest in a figure such as Edward Said (‘a name I tend to skip over’). A lengthy letter from June 1997 anticipates the blockbuster afterlife of the Aubrey-Maturin novels while neatly evoking the various contradictory elements of O'Brian's personality - a misanthropic terror of intrusion (given fictional form in Stephen Maturin), a debonair style allied with an ostentatious abstemiousness, and a single-minded devotion to writing:‘Thank you very much for Alec Guinness’s most entertaining book. He and I are of just the same age, doddering (I hope) on just this side of senility; and I watch with fascination when he takes youthful voyages and eats enormous meals. There is hope yet, although it shrank to a very low ebb when my French publishers asked me up to Paris and proposed three-star luncheons followed by three-star dinners. The world has recently taken to wheeling about in an agitated and often distressing way: a fiend in barely human shape is building a house next to ours – pneumatic drills, mechanical shovels – TCD wishes to give me a (very welcome but time consuming) doctorate – people want books reviewed, commented upon: and all the time Ch III of book XIX (The Hundred Days) remains in Port Mahon harbour, while I pour over the appalling legal jargon of an extended film with Goldwyn for Master and Commander. How I long to sink back into my own wet and bloody medium. With a certain amount of wine’. A group of five letters was sold at Bonhams in London in 2004. Otherwise auction records appear to show only single letters (offered by themselves or with copies of O’Brian’s works).