Corrected entry: When Aubrey gives the boy a book on Nelson, the boy asks about a certain battle and Aubrey tells him it is on a certain page. In 1805 and before, most books did not have page numbers, or those same numbers were incorrect. He's much more likely to have used the printer's signatures or just have flipped through the book to the correct page. I'm not saying he wouldn't have had a book with numbered pages (or those pages wouldn't have been correct), but Aubrey would likely have been in the habit of NOT using page numbers.
meburste
17th Nov 2003
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
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Correction: The poster's point is approximately a full century off. Up until the end of the seventeenth century, printed books were normally numbered by signatures (a combination of letters and numbers marking quires and the leaves within a quire) or foliation (numbered by leaves - recto and verso - rather than separate pages). During the eighteenth century, however, publishers switched to pagination, often in conjunction with signatures. There would have been nothing remotely unusual about a paginated book in 1805.
meburste