SOURCE: Sternlicht, Sanford V. “Hornblower: The Man Alone.” In C. S. Forester and the Hornblower Saga, pp. 89-115. Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

In the following essay from the only full-length study of Forester, a revised reprint of a 1981 edition, Sternlicht presents a full description of all of the Hornblower novels, along with background sources and an assessment of the importance of the series in popular literature.

C. S. Forester created Horatio Hornblower in 1937. Their association continued until Forester's death in 1966. It began as Forester watched a freighter captain, the skipper of the S. S. Margaret Johnson, make decisions for that little world he commanded, his ship.¹ It developed into a parable for English indomitability in the face of tyranny perpetrated by Napoleonic France or Hitlerian Germany. It ended as a fictional epic of a successful British naval officer, cast in the Nelsonian mold, who was born...