Source: Wikipedia

Cecil Scott Forester (1899-1966) was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of adventure with military themes. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, about naval warfare during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston).

Born in Cairo, Forester had a complicated life, including imaginary parents, a secret marriage and a debilitating illness. During World War II he moved to the United States where he wrote propaganda to help get that country to enter the war on the Allied side, and eventually settled in Berkeley, California. He married Kathleen Belcher in 1926, had two sons, and divorced in 1945. The eldest son, John Forester is a noted cycling activist and wrote a biography of his father. In 1947, C. S. Forester secretly married a woman named Dorothy Foster. He suffered extensively from arteriosclerosis later in life.

The popularity of the Hornblower series, built around a central character who was heroic but not too heroic, has continued to grow over time. It is perhaps rivalled only by the much later Aubrey–Maturin series of seafaring novels by Patrick O'Brian. Interestingly, both Hornblower and Aubrey are based in part on the historical figure, Admiral Lord Dundonald of Great Britain (known as Lord Cochrane during the period when the novels are set). Brian Perett has written a book The Real Hornblower: The Life and Times of Admiral Sir James Gordon, GCB, ISBN 1557509689, presenting the case for a different inspiration, namely James Alexander Gordon.

Forester also wrote detective novels like Payment Deferred (1926), selected as one of the Haycraft-Queen cornerstones, and Plain Murder (1930); and seafaring stories that did not involve Hornblower, such as Brown on Resolution (1929), The Ship (1943) and Sink the Bismarck! (1959).

Bibliography

Love Dies Dreaming, 1923

The Paid Piper, 1924

A Pawn Among Kings, 1924

Payment Deferred, 1926

Love Lies Dreaming, 1927

One Wonderful Week, 1927

Brown On Resolution / Single Handed, 1929

Plain Murder, 1930

Two And Twenty, 1931

The Peacemaker, 1934

The General, 1936

The Happy Return, 1937

The Earthly Paradise, 1940

The Captain From Connecticut, 1941

The Ship, 1943

The Bedchamber Mystery, 1944

The Sky And The Forest, 1948

The Nightmare, 1954

The Good Shepherd, 1955

Long Before Forty, 1967

The Man In The Yellow Raft, 1969

Gold From Crete, 1971

The Pursued (2011)