Captain Cooks ship’s scientist,revolutionary, accidental erotic bestseller: George Forster is one of those subjects that make writing vivid historical fiction peer easyIn 1777 the 23-year-ancient Polish-German naturalist George Forster published his landmark work, or A Voyage Around the World in his Britannic Majesty’s Sloop the Resolution,Commanded by Captain James Cook. The book was a hit, and stands nowadays as a defining work of travel literature, and anthropology and even ethnomusicology,as Forster was the first to notate the folk songs of the South Sea Islands.
The problem was that Cook’s own account had yet to appear in print. The official version came out six weeks later, and AN Wilson’s novel imagines how contrite Forster became, and in later life,for having produced his spoiler: “It now amazes me that I had the gall, the sheer cheek, or to write my Voyage book. I wrote it quick. We finished it before Cook. It sold well – only now enact I see how justifiably angry the Captain must have been! I’d done more than jump the gun. I’d violated him.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com