Joseph Banks Book

Devotees of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels will know already the author's total immersion into the social, political, scientific and naval worlds of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The life of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), naturalist, botanist and explorer who sailed with Captain Cook to the South Seas, has long been one of O'Brian's primary resources; so it is only fitting that he should also be Banks's biographer. Any other writer might have produced a worthy study of the scientist; O'Brian provides an affectionate account of the man, as well as illuminating with seemingly effortless erudition Banks's discoveries and those of his contemporaries. Encompassing as it does all of O'Brian's polymath fascinations, the only remarkable thing about this book is that he did not write it sooner. The novelist's eye for detail, familiar from the naval stories, is evident here (when Banks sails for Newfoundland in 1766 we learn, as a matter of course, that on April 22 the wind from Plymouth was east-north-east) as is his absorbing and witty prose style. Drawing extensively on Banks's letters and journals, the author also has to hand any number of illuminating references, from Admiralty records and proceedings of the Royal Society to the diaries of Fanny Burney and Mrs Thrale. From all these sources, as well as from his own empathy for the subject, O'Brian is able to paint a vivid portrait of an extraordinary man and his equally extraordinary discoveries. --Mark Walker Read More