Introduction
'But who are you? I've never seen anyone like you before. My name's
John Ridd. What's your name?'
'Lorna Doone.'
Doone! To me, the name was terrible! She was one of the Doones who
had killed my father. But her voice touched my heart and I could not hate
her. Her beautiful hair fell down onto her shoulders. There were lights and
shadows in her eyes, like sunlight in a deep forest.
In 1673, in a high, wild valley, a farmer's son called John Ridd
meets a gentle little girl called Lorna Doone. The Doones are a
family of robbers and murderers. One of them, Carver Doone, is
the killer of John Ridd's father. The boy leaves the valley, but he
cannot forget Lorna. Seven years later, he returns to the valley as
a young man and meets her again. She is now a beautiful young
woman, and the two start meeting secretly. But Lorna is not
allowed to leave the Doone valley. Carver Doone wants her to be
his wife, and if she refuses, he will force her to marry him.
John is ordered to go to London. A rebellion against the king
is planned, and the government want information from John
about it. They also want him to help destroy the Doones. But can
John destroy the Doones and save Lorna?
The writer of this book, Richard Doddridge Blackmore, was
born at Longworth in Oxfordshire, England, on 7 June 1825. His
mother died of a serious illness when he was only three months
old, and young Richard was sent away to live with his aunt. Six
years later, he returned to live with his father, who had married
again. Almost immediately, the whole family moved to Devon,
in south-west England. Richard went to Blundell's School in
Tiverton, where we meet John Ridd in the first chapter of this
book.
V
Blackmore studied Latin and Greek at Oxford University and
later studied law in London, but as a result of illness he never
worked in the law. Without his father's knowledge, he married
Lucy Maguire. They never had their own children, but one of
Lucy's niece's, Eva, lived with them as a daughter. His illness
forced Blackmore to move out of London, and he taught Latin
and Greek at a school in Twickenham. He also started to write
poems, although he did not use his real name - he used the name
'Melanter'.
His life changed in 1857 when his uncle died and left him
a large amount of money. Blackmore was able to stop teaching
and, in 1860, he and Lucy built their own house in Teddington,
which was in those days a small village just outside London, near
Hampton Court. He started growing and selling flowers, fruit
and vegetables, although without much success. He was also
interested in local politics, and argued publicly against the building
of the railway and the station in Teddington. More importantly,
Blackmore then had time to write. At first he wrote discussions
and stories about fruit growing. Then he translated poems by
Virgil, the Roman writer. As with his own poems, he did not
use his own name. He said that the translations were by 'a market
gardener'.
Blackmore was almost forty years old when his first story,
Clara Vaughan, came out in 1864. He had written it in 1853,
while he was still living in London. Again, he did not use his real
name. This was followed by Cradock Nowell (1866) and, in 1869,
his most famous story, Lorna Doone.
When it first came out, Lorna Doone was very long and was
not a great success. To Blackmore's surprise, though, it slowly
became more popular. Then in 1871, the book was shortened
and cost less money to buy. In that same year, Princess Louise, a
daughter of Queen Victoria, married a man who was not from
the royal family. People became very excited about the wedding.
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A journalist compared the royal marriage to the story in Lorna
Doone. After that, everyone wanted to read the book. Lorna
became a very popular name for girls, Blackmore became famous
and he was able to spend the rest of his life writing. He wrote
several other books, most of them romantic historical stories like
Lorna Doone. They include Cripps the Carrier (1877), Christowell:
A Dartmoor Tale (1881) and Sprinhaven: A Tale of the Great War
(1887), which is a story about southern England during the time
of Napoleon. His last book, Dariel, came out in 1897. Blackmore's
wife, Lucy, died in Teddington in 1888. Blackmore himself died
in 1900 at the age of seventy-five, and his body lies in the same
Teddington churchyard as Lucy.
Of all Blackmore's stories, Lorna Doone is the one for which he
is best remembered. It is an exciting story of love and murder
and of the battle between right and wrong. As a love story, it
was especially interesting at the time. In Victorian England,
it was unusual in real life for people to marry someone from
another level of society. But they were very interested in stories
about people who did! Usually, these stories were about men
who married women from a lower social class (for example, Jane
Austen's Pride and Prejudice, 1813, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane
Eyre, 1847). If the man in a love story came from a lower class
le