Adventure Classic

CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER--C. S. Forester--Little, Brown ($2.75).

It was bargain day this week for adventure-story readers. For the price of one big book, they could get three. Captain Horatio Hornblower is an omnibus of Cecil Scott Forester's three novels (the first two, Beat to Quarters and Ship of the Line already published) of an English naval genius in Napoleonic times. More imaginative than Mutiny on the Bounty, it is that rare book, adventure romance treated realistically, lively entertainment with sound historical background, fast narrative with subtle characterization. Captain Horatio Hornblower stacks up with the most exciting and best written adventure stories in the language.

Captain Hornblower has no actual prototype, though he somewhat resembles Admiral Nelson. A tall, slightly paunchy sea dog with thinning hair, Hornblower is a highstrung, self-doubting man who gets seasick at the start of a cruise, worries about losing his job, goes clammy at the start of a fight, pales at the sight of blood, has the devil's own time keeping his reputation for imperturbability.

What love interest there is in the story plays only a minor and ironic part, centres around the younger (mythical) sister of Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington). Forester's big guns are trained on Hornblower's spectacular sea fights, his three engagements against the 50-gun Spanish man-of-war Natividad off the coast of South America, his daring raids on French men-of-war in the Mediterranean, his recapture of a British 10-gun cutter at Nantes, his escape from Napoleon's firing squad.

Finale to Hornblower's saga is unconventional. As England's great hero of the hour, knighted, rich, free to marry his Lady Barbara, he suddenly realizes in the midst of his triumphs that from then on he is not going to have any more fun at all.

The Author. Wiry, soft-voiced, 39-year-old Cecil Scott Forester has written more than 20 books, took 15 years to find the public's range. Born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of a British civil servant, he first took to writing (verse) when he was a medical student at Guy's Hospital, London. His interest in the sea began on trips between Egypt and England during his boyhood, on one of which he was wrecked off Malaga. Between the ages of 23 and 26, while writing ads, peddling verse and carpets, he wrote several novels and biographies, prefers not to be reminded of them. Payment Deferred, his grim study in murder, was a success on the stage and screen (it started Charles Laughton on his career), but did not sell well as a book. The Gun, an adventure story of the Peninsular War, and The African Queen, a story of a virgin and a Cockney on an African river, won him critical success among adventure connoisseurs, but sold only moderately. His best book, The General, a subtle attack on stuffed-shirt generals, sold 1,935 copies in the U. S. By Teutonic mistake, Author Forester's fame is particularly bright in Germany, where The General is still widely regarded as a serious salute to military might.

A crack amateur boxer and cricketer, Forester is also famed among his friends as a puppeteer, has written a book on puppets. He likes motorboating, has put-putted more than 5,000 miles with his wife on the rivers of France and Germany. Now a part-time correspondent of the London Times, he calls himself a newspaper man who writes novels.

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