Patrick O'Brian

Stephen Maturin is a fictional character in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. The series portrays his career as a physician, naturalist and spy in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and the long pursuit of his beloved Diana Villiers. Maturin was played by Paul... Bettany in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and by Richard Dillane in the BBC Radio 4 adaptations of the O'Brian novels. Stephen Maturin , a Roman Catholic, is the illegitimate son of an Irish officer serving in the Spanish Army and a Catalan lady. He is cousin to the historical Lord Edward FitzGerald. As a boy he lived in Ireland, fostered by a family of pig-herders in Cahirciveen and County Clare, and spent his teenage years in Catalonia - most notably with his grandmother in Lleida, his uncle in Barcelona and his godfather in Ullastret. He received a largely Benedictine education, focussing on the Classics .
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Diana Villiers is a fictional character in the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. Described as beautiful, mercurial, and entirely unreliable, she is the great love and great sorrow of Stephen Maturin's life. Diana enters the series in the novel Post Captain, which begins with... Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin living ashore during the Peace of Amiens. They first see her in a fox hunting field near their leased country house, and are impressed by her beauty and bold spirit. In Post Captain, Diana is living with the Williams family, as a poor relation. Previously a resident of India, where her father was a general and her husband was an official of the East India Company, she returned to England after both men were killed in the same battle with the forces of "Tippoo Sahib". Both Aubrey and Maturin are intrigued by the fiery Diana, although Aubrey also forms a conflicted attachment to Diana's more placid cousin Sophia. Despite Maturin's social disadvantages of being unattractive, illegitimate, and Catholic, Diana enjoys his company and even admits him to her bedroom.
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Tom Pullings is a fictional character from Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of novels, and the movie "Master and Commander".  He is first encountered as a master's mate aboard the Sophie in the book "Master and Commander", and is soon promoted to Lieutenant, at which rank he remains for... most of the series.  He is distinguished by a scar across his face.
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Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary has gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived... her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years into her thirties. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park and Emma , she achieved success as a published writer.
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