C. S. Forester

In 1926, he married Kathleen Belcher with whom he had two sons. He divorced her in 1945. He then married Dorothy Ellen Foster in 1946.

He passed away in Fullerton, California. The cause of his death remains unspecified.

Cecil Scott Forester was born to George Foster Smith, an English teacher and Sarah Medhurst Troughton in Cairo, Egypt. He was the youngest of the five children born to the couple.

When he was 3-years-old, the family broke up and young Forester returned to London with his mother, where he studied at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich College and Guy’s Hospital.

He started writing a number of short stories from a very young age and later, tried to enlist in the army. However, he was refused a place because of his frail build.

In 1921, he quit studying medicine and started to chase writing seriously under a penname. He wrote his first story, ‘A Pawn among Kings’, in 1924. The same year, he also penned, ‘The Paid Piper’ and ‘Napolean and his Court’.

In 1926, he authored ‘Payment Deferred’, which was a crime novel that garnered widespread success. He then began writing a series of novels with naval and military themes.

In 1930, he authored, ‘Plain Murder’ another crime novel. The same year, ‘The Annie Marble in Germany’ was also published. The following year, two famous books, ‘Two-and-Twenty’ and ‘U 97, a Play in 3 Acts’ were published.

In 1935, one of his most influential works, ‘The African Queen’ was published. The book is considered one of his most illustrious works. The following year, ‘The General’ was published.

In 1937, he published the first of the Horatio Hornblower novels, ‘The Happy Return’. This was followed by a second book in the series, ‘A Ship of the Line’ the next year.

He authored, ‘Flying Colours’, another book of the ‘Hornblower’ series, which was published in 1938. The other novels that he published in the next one decade that were not related to the ‘Hornblower’ series include, ‘The Captain of Connecticut’, ‘The Ship’ and ‘Hunting the Bismarck’.

C.S. Forester’s magnum opus is the ‘Horatio Hornblower’ series. It chronicles the story about a British naval officer as he rises in status and battles competitors during the Napoleonic era. Even though ‘The Happy Return’ was the first ‘Hornblower’ creation by C.S. Forester in the series, it was not considered the first in chronology. The first installment starts with ‘Mr. Midshipman Hornblower’ and ends with ‘C.S. Forester’s Hornblower One More Time’.

The books became critically acclaimed and even anthologies were printed including, ‘Young Hornblower: Three Complete Novels’ and ‘The Young Hornblower Omnibus’. These books were also adapted for a series of television drama shows which ran from 1998 to 2003.