"Master and Commander" met with mixed early reviews on its first publication. Although UK sales were respectable enough for O'Brian to continue with his series, it was not initially a success in the US. In Britain and Ireland, however, voices of praise gradually became dominant. In 1990, the US publisher W W Norton re-issued the book and its sequels; this was an almost immediate success and drew O'Brian a new, large readership. O'Brian's biographer has placed the novel at the start of what he called the author's magnum opus, a series that has become perhaps the best-loved "roman fleuve" of the twentieth century.