R. D. Blackmore
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Richard Doddridge Blackmore (June 7, 1825 - January 20, 1900), usually known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the his generation.
Blackmore was born at Longworth, Berkshire, of which parish his father was vicar. Like John Ridd, the hero of Lorna Doone, he was educated at Blundell's School, Tiverton, and at Oxford. He practised for a short time as a lawyer but an early marriage with a beautiful Portuguese girl, and a long illness, forced him to live for some years in hard and narrow circumstances. Happily, in 1860, he came, unexpectedly, into a considerable fortune. Settling down at Teddington, he divided his life between the delights of gardening and the pleasures of literature; cultivating his vines, peaches, nectarines, pears, and strawberries, and writing, first, sensational stories, and then historical romances. His first publication was Poems by Melanter (1853), followed by Epullia (1855), The Bugle of the Black Sea (1855), etc.; but he soon found that fiction, not poetry, was his true vocation. Beginning with Clara Vaughan in 1864, he produced fifteen novels, all of more than average, and two or three of outstanding merit. Of these much the best in the opinion of the public, though not of the author, is Lorna Doone (1869), the two which rank next to it being The Maid of Sker (1872) (the author's favourite) and Springhaven (1887). Others are Cradock Nowell (1866), Alice Lorraine (1875), Cripps the Carrier (1876), Mary Anerley (1880), and Christowell (1882).
Blackmore acted as the pioneer of the new romantic movement in fiction which Robert Louis Stevenson and other brilliant writers afterwards carried on. One of the most striking features of his writings is his marvellous eye for, and sympathy with, Nature. He may be said to have done for Devonshire what Scott did for the Highlands. He has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred."
Lorna Doone is the most famous of his heroines, but in Cradock Nowell, a fine tale of the New Forest, in Alice Lorraine, a story of the South Downs, and in The Maid of Sker, he has depicted womanly types equal in charm to Lorna.
Blackmore died at Teddington on January 20, 1900.