Product Description

The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. Though not an unqualified success, this first naval adventure teaches the young midshipman enough to launch him on a series of increasingly glorious exploits. This novel-in which young Horatio gets his sea legs, proves his mettle, and shows the makings of the legend he will become-is the first of the eleven swashbuckling Hornblower tales that are today regarded as classic adventure stories of the sea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7375 in Books
• Published on: 1984-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780316289122
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Library Journal
This trio offer more of the salty adventures of the title character, who sailed the ocean blue during the Napoleonic Wars.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Glimpses of the youth of the beloved hero of the Hornblower series as a green boy in His Majesty's navy develops into the hard-headed, soft-hearted man most high-schoolers meet in their outside reading. Action in the French and Spanish wars with Hornblower serving under two captains. Superior action stories. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher
8 1-hour cassettes

Customer Reviews

Classic though not Hornblower's best outing
This first Hornblower book that Forester wrote was BEAT TO QUARTERS, and that is still arguably the best Hornblower book to read first (though not the best in the series). Because MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER comes first in the saga's timeline, though, many readers start here and unfortunately do not get Hornblower at his best point of entry. The pacing of this collection of stories simply does not grip the reader as well as that of the novels. I'm sure they worked fine when published individually in the popular magazines of the day, but when clutched together like this, an awkward lack of fluidity results.

That said, MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER is still an excellent book, rich with fascinating incident and detail, and anyone who has started the series will certainly read it -- the whole series is just too good! Certainly by the last episode in this book, quite a long story, the young Hornblower has gotten into the thick of it and you have begun to find out (if this is indeed where you've come in) just why Forester continues to be held in such high regard by generation after generation of readers.

Another important point is that MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER is the material from which the recent A&E series took its inspiration, and you do owe it to yourself if you saw it on TV to read the book and find out why and how that pivotal duel *really* happened. Be prepared to learn that C.S. Forester's plot turns were considerably more dramatic and thought-provoking than the hash (though admittedly watchable hash) made of them for TV consumption.

Incidentally, this paperback edition is lovely. The woodcut-style cover artwork looks really nice, and the pages and typeface being about the same size as a hardback edition make handling it and reading it a special pleasure

Series order for the Hornblower books
For those of you getting started with this series, here is the series order (hey, we need to know this in order to buy the darn books!): 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 Hownblower, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies. The other titles you'll see are different 3-in-1-cover combinations of the above titles, though not always in series order (go figure), Cadet versions of the same titles above by different titles (REALLY go figure), and companion books. There IS one omnibus, so I'm told, with some short stories in it that fall chronologically somewhere in the time span covered by the first three books, but I don't know any more than that yet.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower: A Slow Start for the Series
The 'Hornblower' novels by C. S. Forester are all consistently entertaining and fun, but the first novel in the series, 'Mr. Midshipman Hornblower,' is a rather slow start. Rather than a single novel, it is a series of short stories revolving around Hornblower's first years at sea. While the stories maintain that sense of adventure that are Forester's trademark, it lacks a consistency which is to be found in the later volumes. 'Mr. Midshipman Hornblower' is must reading for fans of the series but for those new to the 'Hornblower' novels perhaps a better introduction would be to read 'Lieutenant Hornblower,' the second novel of the series.