Japhet, in Search of a Father: The Models of Captain Marryat

by Frederick Marryat

Japhet, in Search of a Father is a part of Frederick Marryat's collection of adventure novels, beloved by the likes of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. Marryat was a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars, but retired to research and writing after the wars' end in 1815. He wrote dozens of novels, plays, short stories and essays inspired by his naval experiences. Originally published in 1836 and then re released in 1896, Japhet, in Search of a Father follows Japhet, a young man who knows nothing about his parents or birth, and his change of fortune and bad luck as he journeys through the class obsessed England and Ireland.

Genres: British Literature, Fiction, Adventure

448 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2020

About the author

Captain Frederick Marryat was a British Royal Navy officer and novelist, an early pioneer of the sea story.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...

Reviews

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I love the kind of books that start with a foundling hospital, or with a baby left on a doorstep. "Tom Jones", by Henry Fielding, "Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, would be two of the most famous of these. Well here's another. And just as good. I do not understand why Frederick Marryat is so little known! It makes no sense whatsoever. He is very much in the vein of Dickens, full of characters and adventures (often at sea - Marryat was a sea captain) and humour - wonderful humour, I might add, overflowing with colour and life. This particular novel of his is a Tom Sawyer-ish living-by-his-wits picaresque kind of thing. Japhet goes from a foundling hospital to being an apothecary apprentice, to living with the gypsies, to high society, utter ruin, to living with the Quakers, and all the while looking for his father. And he has the inevitable faithful sidekick, who is looking for his mother.

Anyway. I loved it. I might re-read it and give it 5*. It has so much of what I like in it. It kills me to think that I missed out on Marryat for so long. Who else am I missing?

[Mrs. C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book by Frederick Marryat that I have read, but it won't be the last. Why his name is not well known is a mystery to me. Yes, the plot depended on coincidence, but as somewhat of a picaresque novel, that is forgivable.The vicissitudes of Japhet, a foundling child, keep the reader turning pages until the wee small hours of the morning, as the young man navigates his way through class-conscious England and Ireland in much the same way as a Wilkie Collins protagonist. Along the way, we get glimpses of the system of law, the gypsy culture, Quaker identity, and the Irish no-law-west-of-the-Pecos mentality in the early nineteenth-century. All threads are woven together in a Dickensian manner in the final chapters. I'm hoping to find more gems from Marryat in the coming months.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I doubt I would have picked up this book if I hadn't inherited it from my grandmother, but I'm glad it fell into my possession. It's very strangely structured - slow at the beginning, reaching a major climax about 150 pages before the end, and then changing tack and almost beginning anew halfway through. For all that it was a really enjoyable read. Japhet's a good narrator to spend time with - mischievous without being bad, and consistently caught up in mad adventures.

[Shiruji · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in "Aasen dialect", the first (and only?) versions in Norwegian, printed in 1894. Hence, the jokes and story was both typical Marryat but also had a feeling of the Norwegian lonely, majestic mountains, the smell of farmers, etc. I loved it!

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great read from the great Captain. Very Dickensian in scope and character. Not set on water!!

Not as "moral" as some of the other books (meaning I didn't mark as many pages with "that's important") but still great. The whole story is moral and upright in the main.

It had a little twist or variation on the love story format usually found in Marryat--that was fun.

Sorry I can't give you the details, but seriously, sometime you all need to pick up a Marryat.

One thing I did flag:

"If the reader will recall my narrative to his recollection, he must observe, that religion had had hiterto but little of my thoughts. I had lived the life of most who live in this world; perhaps not quite so correct in morals as many people for my code of morality was suited to circumstances; as to religion, I had none. I had lived in the world, and for the world. I had certainly been well instructed in the tenets of our faith when I was at the Asylum (the main character had been raised in a "foundling hospital"), but there, as in most other schools, it is made irksome, as a task, and is looked upon with almost a feeling of aversion. No proper religious sentiments are, or can be, inculcated to a large number of scholars; it is the parent alone who can instill, by precept and example, that true sense of religion, which may serve as a guide through life."

Quite.