Mr Midshipman Hornblower was published by Michael Joseph in 1950. Forester had already written seven Hornblower novels covering the character’s career from lieutenant to admiral; this book goes back to the beginning. Hornblower enters the Navy as a seventeen-year-old midshipman in January 1794 — the early months of the French Revolutionary Wars.
The novel is structured as ten linked stories rather than continuous narrative: each covers a distinct episode in Hornblower’s early career. He fights a duel with a bully (and discovers courage under fire). He takes command of a prize crew on a captured merchant ship (and navigates her through a storm). He is captured by the Spanish (and escapes through an audacious deception). He participates in a cutting-out expedition (and reveals the tactical brilliance that will define his later career).
Forester’s Hornblower is the anti-hero as naval officer: perpetually seasick, crippled by self-doubt, unable to accept praise, convinced that his successes are due to luck rather than ability. This interior life — the gap between Hornblower’s public competence and private misery — is Forester’s great innovation. Patrick O’Brian would later expand this approach into the Aubrey-Maturin series, but Forester was first.
Collecting Mr Midshipman Hornblower
First edition (Michael Joseph, London, 1950): Blue cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition with jacket, fine/fine: $200–$600
- Without jacket, very good: $50–$150
- US first (Little, Brown): $100–$300