Hornblower and the Crisis

Hornblower and the Crisis is both the final installment in the Hornblower series and the final novel of creator C.S. Forester's illustrious career. Set across two months in the early summer of 1805, the novel sits between Hornblower and the Hotspur and Hornblower and the Atropos in the series' timeline. Unfortunately, the book was never finished by its author, who died the year before its eventual publication in 1967.

To provide a more complete coda to the career of a great author, and to the saga of a remarkable literary creation, the unfinished novel is collected along with pieces of Forester's short fiction. These pieces include Hornblower and the Widow McCool, and The Last Encounter — a story set in 1848 that provides a satisfactory point of completion for the series' legions of fans. As Hornblower bows out, alongside the author who brought so much excitement and adventure into the world, it's natural to feel a tinge of sadness. But this work, as with Forester's others, is a triumphal one, even if the writer could never quite finish the final novel to his satisfaction.