Talk:The Yellow Admiral

Post-Captain Thomas Pullings

The last we hear of Tom Pullings is in The Commodore when he is Post-Captain of HMS Bellona in Aubrey's squadron. After this, it seems that he is completely dropped by O'Brian. I find this rather disappointing, given that he plays such a prominent role in most of the novels and is also Jack Aubrey's protege. Ivankinsman (talk) 09:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Mr Geoghegan

I noticed when reading the novel that Geoghegan dies but then - much later in the story - suddenly makes a brief re-appearance as a look-out (I forgot to note the page number) which seems to be a slip on the author's part. Ivankinsman (talk) 09:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Other

• Support. Unnecessary disambiguation. grendel|khan 21:26, 2005 May 6 (UTC)
• Neutral to Don't Move Some of O'Brian's titles require disambiguation and it seems reasonable to have a certain consistency in the page titles with the added (novel) after all of them. Given that I am not completely set on that. Dabbler 23:04, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

recovery of Stephen's fortune

No mention is made in the plot summary of the recovery of Stephen's gold from the Spanish bank. The book does not explicity explain how this is achieved, although the reader may assume it is one of the results of the blackmail of elements of the Spanish government as a consequence of catching the Catalan spy red-handed. Nevertheless, since his impoverishment is noted in the beginning of the summary, the recovery of his fortune should also be noted, probably in the paragraph describing his visit to Woolcombe where he takes Sophie's reconciliatory letter for Jack. NaySay (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Length of reviews

@Prairieplant: I just noticed the length of the quotes in this article: that is not good, in fact, it leads to a Copyright Violation, because we are copying more than qualifies for WP:Fair Use: see Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Acceptable_use. To be fair in scholarly style, and to make sure we preserve our copyright, you should be trying to summarize, integrate, and generally represent more fairly the quotations (see Wikipedia:Quotations#Overusing_quotations). Try breaking the reviews section to cover different distinct elements of the books (for instance, Themes, Style, etc.) whcih are recommended by the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Novels. I hope that helps, Sadads (talk) 23:19, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Here is another point of reasoning and advice: Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing#Quotation_of_non-free_text

Thanks, Sadads My first challenge is finding the reviews. Most of the O'Brian book articles did not have any review section, to my surprise, and no editor knocked them down for that absence, which surprised me. I only lately learned that to find a review in the New York Times, I need to have New York Times in the search key along with book title and author, on google. Else it does not show up, simply searching for author, book title, reviews. That means repeating the search for each newspaper name that seems likely. So I find a few more reviews for these O'Brian works now, besides Kirkus Reveiw, Publishers Weekly. I cannot get any from British sources so far, other than noting someone else's quote from the original source (e.g., lots of such quote at the W. W. Norton site for O'Brian), which I think is inadequate -- a publisher wants "blurbs" most of the time, and blurbs are not reviews. And I do not have any of the books that came out in the oughts (first decade of this century) that reviewed the whole series, possibly a serious lack. That next step of figuring out what it all means, that seems harder to me! I wish some lit major would come around after me and figure out what it all means, ah well. Themes and styles, I will have to think on those. Trying to address the debate among those who think he is like Jane Austen, but writing historically (where she wrote of her own times) and those who seem to like only the books with lots of battles, is that what you mean? You may safely guess from this post that I am not a lit major. It was in hunting out the reviews this second-time-through reading the books that I came to understand the impact of W. W. Norton's decision to publish in the American market, finding a new market (American and others, as far as I have found so far) for a series pretty far along already, and an author over 70 if I recall correctly. The right balance between my words and the quotes, do you have a better example, if there is not to be a lit major coming behind me to use these references for an excellent, or even pretty good, review section? --Prairieplant (talk) 14:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed, you changed the shorter quotes to be regular text inside quote marks. The last time I used that method, the next editor on whatever article it was told me I should use italics for that situation. Not an ironclad rule? It does not matter to me which way, but I know have used italics since whenever I was alerted earlier. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:04, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

@Prairieplant: Quotation is usually in quotation marks, italics is usually reserved for titles, and for emphasis within the text, as indicated by the original text (or for your editorial intentions to emphasize) see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting#Italic_type and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting#Quotations for the explicit outline of italics v. quotes.

For the examples of well written critical reception sections, I am going to pull from Good articles I know well: Quicksilver (novel)#Critical Reception is a good example of a critical reception section that doesn't need separate sections, because it didn't have a wide range of deep reviews; if there is enough information for themes/style/structure, articles like Divergent_(novel)#Themes, The_Great_Lover_(novel)#Style and The_French_Lieutenant's_Woman#Themes do good jobs. More generally, if you are looking for ideal models for literary works, you could compare with Featured articles on the topic, for example, I think Night_(book)#Reception and Pattern_Recognition_(novel)#Style_and_story_elements do well in covering the two styles we usually have (with Night opting for a bulk reception section, and Pattern Recognition opting for the more scholarly approach. Notice how all of them selectively quote the most important, hard to rephrase language, while adding summaries of the authors' arguments/intentions in the argument. Remember, we are summarizing the scope of the reviews, and trying to place them in a synthesis that helps the reader understand the novel as a work, not as a series of distinct and seperate peoples opinions about the work.

As for the W.W. Norton recovery of the O'Brian novels: it does create quite a difference in both the sales and reception of the novels; and in doing so, they turned him from marginally cult into a really phenomenal sensation (also the paintings used for the Norton Covers are absolutely striking; I would recommend going to the National Museum of the Royal Navy if you are ever in Portsmouth for the paintings alone: they have most of them hanging in one of the main museum buildings, near the gift shop; they are surprisingly small). As for finding reviews: I once did several passes using research databases on some of the novels, and its surprisingly hard to find some of the earlier stuff, especially for period when the novels published exclusively in Britain during the 70s/80s. There are also several dissertations and/or scholarly articles that treat the books in depth, that you might be able to find via Google Scholar. If for whatever reason, you can't find a copy of something, but you know it exists: I have access to a university library and a really good inter-library loan service; so email me I can either find it for you, or make a request.

Hope this is useful, and I am happy to mentor on this: I have some literary training, and am really interested in these kinds of articles being more than plot summaries and collections of quotes. Also, if you are interested, I am drafting an article about Sea novels as a genre, and would be glad to include collaborators, Sadads (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes all you have said is useful That is a fantastic list of examples, and I never read any of those Wikipedia articles before. Not much that I have read in my life compares with Night by Elie Wiesel, but the articles on Patrick O'Brian's series could be raised up a lot in quality, as it is fair to compare him with Jane Austen, writing the man's life in that era, but as historical fiction, where she wrote the woman's life. I had hoped for more in the main article on the series Aubrey–Maturin series, but find that pretty thin, well, thin in places. I think of that because so many reviews in the few years after W. W. Norton published along with Harper Collins (or their name of the year) and then re-issued the earlier novels, many reviewers had not yet realized the scope of the series, having read just one or perhaps two of the novels. By the time of this novel and the one prior, reviewers knew more and their reviews are more interesting for that specific novel. Many tend to review the series as a whole, and see the 20 books as one very long novel, but this oft-made remark is not in the article on the series. It was Collins (as known in 1988) who hired Geoff Hunt to do those covers, by the way (my source for that tidbit is in one of the articles) before W. W. Norton was on the scene. There is an on-line collection of them at http://www.hmssurprise.org/harpercollins-covers-geoff-hunt. Norton use the same covers as Harper Collins for later novels, and all re-issues by those two publishers use Geoff Hunt's covers, one of the things uncovered in my hunt for reviews. I thought the Geoff Hunt cover should be a second image, titled Re-issue cover by Geoff Hunt for those books The Reverse of the Medal and earlier that had other artists do the first edition cover. I have not learned how to handle images, with all the proper copyright documents, and simply copying them, which is why I did not just do it myself. Those are the covers current reader will see, on audio books or anything large enough for an image now. Also in e-books, the one or two I have seen. My wimpy little Wikipedia precedent is the handling of Agatha Christie novels where different covers were used in the US and the UK. First edition cover in the infobox, and the other cover down later in the article. (I listen to audio books, rather hooked on them, but then hunt up a text when I cannot spell a name correctly by guessing.)

My big concern is if I am up to this. I know you are up to it, no doubt. I write very slowly compared to you, and do not have that literary background evident in the writing in all your examples. I can follow it, but it is hard to see me producing it. I have not tried, you can say that fairly, so who knows. My training was in technical writing, which I produced by the ton (paid by the pound, we used to joke) in long ago decades. It is a very different style, though we did use footnotes and have our prose haggled over by editors. Yes I would like to see these articles improved, but I am unsure if I can work quickly enough. Before I read all your links to good examples of what you mean, I made sure every book up to The Yellow Admiral had more in the lead, some parts of the plot, but not the ending, no more than three sentences. Then I read the leads in those good articles. A Pacific Ocean of quality separates what I wrote from those! Do we try this one novel at a time? --Prairieplant (talk) 18:02, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know: saw the comments, but got distracted working on Draft:Nautical fiction. Feel free to join, if you have some insight, etc. I will respond to your thoughts on the series another night: loosing focus/its getting late tonight. Sadads (talk) 06:43, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Sadads Slowly I have been chopping out the too-long quotations in the reviews for every novel in this series. I found some more reviews as well, that did not show up the first time. I am re-reading the novels and generally do the chop-out after I read the novel again. The last paragraph of the lead is highlights, summary of the reviews, with inline citations. I do not have a copy of Cunningham's or King's books to add that extra material into Reviews, which I hope another editor will do. I made a chart (Excel spreadsheet really) of reviews for each novel one day, and was surprised at how much it varies, number of reviews per novel. One novel has no reviews at all that I can find, save that it was the novel given to Starling Lawrence of W W Norton, The Reverse of the Medal. Here I am. 3 years later, nearing the end of the series again. Now the audio books are not always on CD, but downloads from the public library, via so far, two different software applications. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Is Yellow an insult?

Dabbler I hit enter before I finished explaining the revert back to insult. 'Commonly' does not seem a clear replacement for 'an insult' in explaining the notion of being "yellowed". Aubrey did not much like it, but was that the case in the Navy of that day? If so, then insult is clear and accurate. I have to say it seems like an insult to me, and in some reading that I cannot now cite (thus useless I suppose), I got the idea that "yellowing" was involuntary retirement, certainly not a pat on the back. 'Commonly' suggests everyone knows this, in which case, why is it being explained? I cannot think of a better phrase, maybe you can. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:04, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Yellowing could occur for many reasons which were not an insult as such, though perhaps an individual officer might take to be such in that he felt that his services were being dispensed with unjustly. For example if an promising captain was too low on the list of captains to be promoted to Rear Admiral (which was done strictly on seniority at this time) then other captains ahead would have to be promoted (or retired) but not given a command immediately, thus "yellowing" them. Later they might possibly be reinstated as an active service admiral in the Blue squadron. So it was not an insult, just that they were not considered as suitable for high command. The reason I used "commonly" was because it was a slang term used for the process, not an official wording as there is no such appointment as the Yellow squadron. The Admiralty did not mean it to be an insult, they were just trying to get the best commanders for the fleet. If an officer took it as an insult, as Jack might well have done, that was purely personal reaction and an unintentional result of the demands of the service. I hope you will understand my logic and revert back to remove the suggestion that it was a deliberate insult and not overweening pride taking it as one. Dabbler (talk)

Dabbler -- How about informally? If the Navy did not feel me good enough to be the admiral with a squadron, I think I would feel insulted by that, so I can see why Aubrey does not (if I recall correctly) ever mention the situation of being yellowed as being anything but undesirable. You view it from the judgment of those making decisions for the good of the service, in a time where there were more captains moving up to admiral status by seniority, with not enough squadrons to be led by an admiral. As the term is not the formal Navy term, how about informally in place of commonly or 'an insult'? It is the best word that comes to me, is it good and accurate? In the lead, being "yellowed" is described as the 'worst career fate', so Aubrey takes himself out of the service until Napoleon restarts the war by his escape from exile. I tried to make the Plot summary say what is already in the lead, and distinguish Aubrey's view from the formal view of the Royal Nay. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:03, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Good workaround, it meets both views of the situation. Dabbler (talk) 16:34, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

ISBN for Norton edition or HarperCollins edition?

The infobox shows the W W Norton first edition ISBN. The ISBN for supposed first UK edition hardback is 978-0002255615, taken from web sites offering the first UK edition for sale. ISBN for UK Amazon hardback is the same (ten digit version is 0002255618) but it says January 1, 1997, and not 1996 which is the year of publication. I cannot find anything with the HarperCollins ISBN and an indication that the book was released in 1996, using a google search and using Book Sources utility in Wikipedia leading to WorldCat. The reviews for this novel are dated 1996, so the book was out in 1996. Do I change to the Harper Collins ISBN and forget about the date concerns? --Prairieplant (talk) 12:40, 22 February 2018 (UTC)