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Collected Short Stories (O'Brian book)

1994 short story collection by Patrick O'Brian

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ97357014 ↗
Source-derived summary

Collected Short Stories is a 1994 collection of stories by the English author Patrick O'Brian. It was published in the US under the title The Rendezvous and Other Stories.

Background

The collection consists of 27 stories which, according to the book's first edition dust jacket, represent "all the stories which O'Brian wishes to preserve". All had previously appeared in one of his earlier collections The Last Pool (1950), The Walker (1953), Lying in the Sun (1956) and The Chian Wine (1974), and some had also been published individually.

Dean King's 2000 biography includes commentary on many of the stories, as do the two volumes of biography (2004 and 2019) by O'Brian's step-son Nikolai Tolstoy.

Stories

"The Return"

A man returns for a day's fishing to a favourite spot where, over the years, he had spent happy times with several female companions. He catches a handsome trout but as he looks down at its fine flesh and feels it bound and then lie still at his gentle touch, he feels a symbolism and cannot find it in his heart to kill it.

Tolstoy notes that this story, completed in November 1939, was O'Brian's first venture into the description of man's relationship with nature. He praised the "delicate attention to detail and brilliant evocation of atmosphere."

"The Happy Despatch"

A fisherman discovers a pot of gold during a fishing expedition, and meets his doom at the very moment of his escape with it.

Tolstoy considered this story to be "unmistakably autobiographical", the protagonist being a man who, after failing in the British Army, has moved to a remote corner of Ireland where he finds himself unable to maintain a small farm; his poor judgement and lack of guile leads to a life of wretchedness which culminates in disaster.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Collected Short Stories (O'Brian book)” as 1994 short story collection by Patrick O'Brian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1994, 1950, 1953, 1956—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1994. The account is most persuasive where Collected, Short and Stories can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1994 short story collection by Patrick O'Brian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q97357014. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1950, 1953 and 1956.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Collected Short Stories (O'Brian book)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.