Background
He was born Cecil Lewis Troughton Smith in Cairo, Egypt, the son of George Smith, a British official in the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and Sarah Troughton.
(These thrilling tales of high-seas adventure in the Napol...)
These thrilling tales of high-seas adventure in the Napoleonic era, which Winston Churchill found "vastly entertaining" and Ernest Hemingway recommended to "every literate I know", are being eagerly embraced by a new generation of readers. Back Bay takes pleasure in reissuing these classic tales in handsome new trade paperback editions. -- The Hornblower renaissance is in full sail with a nearly tenfold increase in sales: more than I5O, OOO Hornblower books sold in the first six months of 1999. -- The A&E television network's series of original movies based on Hornblower's adventures have been tremendously successful -- praised by critics, enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of viewers, and winner of the Emmy Award for best miniseries. -- Two new movies will be premiering in the spring on A&E. -- Readers and booksellers who admire Patrick O'Brian's novels delight in discovering this "new" series of nautical adventure stories.
https://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Hornblower-West-Indies-Saga/dp/0523413955?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0523413955
(1989, trade paperback reprint edition (of a work first pu...)
1989, trade paperback reprint edition (of a work first published in 1946), Backbay Books / Little Brown, Boston, MA. 322 pages. The 9th volume in this classic series of novels set at sea, involving a leader named Horatio Hornblower. "No other writer can equal Forester at this kind of storytelling."
https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Hornblower-Cecil-Scott-Forester/dp/B000QUPBCQ?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000QUPBCQ
(SEE OUR PHOTOS! This 504-page hardcover was published by ...)
SEE OUR PHOTOS! This 504-page hardcover was published by Little, Brown in 1939 (35th printing). This book is in good condition. Pages appear clean and unmarked There is no dustcover. The tan hardcover looks good, with minor shelf wear, and slightly bumped corners. The binding is solid. Overall, a good conditioned volume. Please see our 3 photos of this book (on a white sheet).
https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Horatio-Hornblower-Cecil-Forester/dp/9997512472?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=9997512472
(In 1941, Hitler's deadly Bismarck, the fastest battleship...)
In 1941, Hitler's deadly Bismarck, the fastest battleship afloat, broke out into the Atlantic. Its mission: to cut the lifeline of British shipping and win the war with one mighty blow. How the Royal Navy tried to meet this threat and its desperate attempt to bring the giant Bismarck to bay is the story C. S. Forester tells with mounting excitement and suspense.
https://www.amazon.com/Sink-Bismarck-Cecil-Scott-Forester/dp/0553105418?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0553105418
(Flying Colours: A Captain Horatio Hornblower adventure no...)
Flying Colours: A Captain Horatio Hornblower adventure novel.
https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Colours-Captain-Horatio-Hornblower/dp/B003UH25W6?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003UH25W6
He was born Cecil Lewis Troughton Smith in Cairo, Egypt, the son of George Smith, a British official in the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and Sarah Troughton.
He attended Dulwich College from 1915 to 1918 and studied medicine at Guy's Hospital in London from 1918 to 1921. However, he left medical school after failing a crucial examination, declared his intention to become a professional writer, and assumed the name Cecil Scott Forester.
During his literary apprenticeship, Forester wrote several potboilers and hack biographies of such figures as Napoleon, the empress Josephine, Victor Emmanuel of Italy, Louis XIV of France, and Admiral Nelson.
Most of these works he later repudiated. After his thriller Payment Deferred (1926) was dramatized in stage and screen versions featuring Charles Laughton, he contracted to write screenplays and moved to Southern California.
As he said later, "I don't believe I ever went hungry again. " His work in motion pictures "provided the money that set me free to do what I wanted. " Over the years, he worked on films such as Born for Glory (1935), Eagle Squadron (1942), and Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), all based on his original stories. Forester resided in California at least nine months a year for the remainder of his life, though he never became an American citizen.
In the 1930's, Forester found his motier as a historical novelist. During this decade, he wrote The Gun (1933), a story of the Peninsular War, in which the British fought against Napoleon in Spain, and The African Queen (1935), a novel set in central Africa early in World War I; in 1951, the latter work was adapted to film with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in the leading roles. Forester followed these successes with The General (1936), a novel about the foibles of the British high command during World War I.
This work enjoyed unusual critical celebrity: Adolf Hitler presented copies in German translation and bound in vellum to Nazi leaders for Christmas in 1938.
Forester also worked briefly as a foreign correspondent on the eve of World War II, covering the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1937 and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 for the Times of London.
The approach of world war also supplied Forester with the inspiration for the Hornblower Saga, the series of seafaring novels for which he is best remembered.
His initial trilogy about the intrepid Captain (later Commodore, Admiral, and Lord) Horatio Hornblower--Beat to Quarters (1937), A Ship of the Line (1938), and Flying Colours (1938)--celebrate English naval heroism during the Napoleonic Wars.
By his own testimony, Forester was fascinated by the possibilities for historical fiction of the "man alone, " the strong-willed and humane leader prone to decisive action.
The next two novels in the series, The Commodore (American title Commodore Hornblower, 1945) and Lord Hornblower (1946), first appeared serially during the waning months of World War II and were thinly disguised Allied propaganda.
As his biographer, Sanford Sternlicht, notes, "Forester used Napoleon as a surrogate Hitler. Both men had been archenemies of England, both had conquered almost all of Continental Europe, both had been kept at bay by the British Navy. " After suffering a bout of arteriosclerosis in 1943 and a heart attack in 1948 that left him a semi-invalid until his death, Forester credited the character of Hornblower with saving him from "the life of a cabbage in a wheelchair. "
In all, Forester wrote twelve Hornblower books, including a fragment that appeared posthumously under the title Hornblower and the Crisis (1967). Sales totaled over 8 million copies in Great Britain and the United States. The books were also translated into nearly fifty languages.
Though a popular hero, Hornblower was no mere stereotype. He fretted before battle, suffered from seasickness, and once while intoxicated committed adultery with a Russian countess (and as a result contracted typhus from a flea).
Though his reputation largely rests on the Hornblower Saga, Forester wrote a total of forty-two books and experimented with a variety of literary forms.
In The Captain from Connecticut (1941) he invented an intrepid American privateer in the Hornblower mold. While employed by the British Ministry of Information during World War II, he wrote his best-selling novel The Ship (1943), the fictionalized account of a single day aboard a British cruiser on duty in the Mediterranean.
He died in Fullerton, California.
(These thrilling tales of high-seas adventure in the Napol...)
(1989, trade paperback reprint edition (of a work first pu...)
(SEE OUR PHOTOS! This 504-page hardcover was published by ...)
(In 1941, Hitler's deadly Bismarck, the fastest battleship...)
(Flying Colours: A Captain Horatio Hornblower adventure no...)
(antique book; war at sea; fiction)
Quotations:
Forester sought above all to tell an entertaining story, and he harbored few pretensions about the artistic quality of his work. "I have had a remarkably happy life--I doubt if anyone could have had a happier [one] during the twentieth century, " Forester once told an interviewer.
He said later that the fictional Hornblower "was one of my closest friends. "
Quotes from others about the person
As Francis X. Connolly of Commonweal explained in 1946, Hornblower was "essentially a sensitive, uncertain, and complicated figure, " a modern hero set against "a romantic background, " whose "observations on the age of Napoleon" were delivered "in the accent of twentieth-century liberalism. "
He married Katherine Belcher in 1926; they had two children before their divorce in 1944. Forester married Dorothy Ellen Foster in 1947.