Richard Doddridge Blackmore, known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, and at Exeter College, Oxford, Blackmore was called to the bar but withdrew because of ill health. He married in 1852 and was a schoolteacher from 1855 to 1857. Then, upon receiving a legacy, he bought a property at Teddington and settled down to fruit growing. After publishing some poems, Blackmore produced Clara Vaughan, a first and fairly successful novel, in 1864 and Cradock Nowell in 1866. Lorna Doone was his third. Its popularity grew slowly until the qualities of this imaginative and exciting tale of 17th-century Exmoor eventually brought it fame. In the book, John Ridd, a young rustic giant of North Devon, rescues the high-born Lorna from the hands of her outlaw relatives and finally rises not only to the possession of Lorna's hand but to a high position on the strength of his own merit. According to the preface, the work is a romance and not a historical novel, because the author neither "dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty of a historical novel." As such, it combines elements of traditional romance, of Sir Walter Scott's historical novel tradition, of the pastoral tradition, of traditional Victorian values, and of the contemporary sensation novel trend. You can listen online to free English audiobook “Lorna Doone” by Richard Doddridge Blackmore on our website.
