Stephen Maturin's Online Natural History Library
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By the beginning of the 19th Century, many land and sea expeditions had been completed, both to establish trade routes and for scientific pursuits, and published accounts were abundant. As a well-educated physician possessing several languages, Stephen Maturin would no doubt have had access to a wide variety of publications available at the time. The Hancock Natural History Collection at the University of Southern California has 460 books titles which were published from before 1800, and another 1,516 monograph titles which were published from 1800 to 1849.
From Patrick O'Brian's chronicles of Stephen's life (and a nod to Anthony Gary Brown's The Patrick O'Brian Muster Boo), it is certain that, in addition to procedings from the Royal Society and the French Académie des sciences, he was familiar with a variety of international ornithologists, botanists, entomologists, anatomists, geologists, and naturalists.
