Captain Frederick Marryat is known today as the inventor of the adventurous, military maritime novel. Sixty years ago, his name was known to any literate reader of English since his novels had shaped the imaginations of nearly all English readers for at least a hundred years after 1840, especially those who went on to write novels of adventure. Later exponents of the genre include R.M. Ballantyne (1825-94) whose most famous work is The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1858), C. S. Forester (1899-1966) with his Hornblower novels (1937-67), Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000) notably with his Master and Commander (1989), and William Golding (1911-1993) with his sea-trilogy To the Ends of the Earth …
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Citation: Clark, Robert. "Captain Frederick Marryat". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2949, accessed 23 November 2024.]