R.D. Blackmore
Richard Doddridge Blackmore, referred to most commonly as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of his generation. Over the course of his career, Blackmore achieved a close following around the world. He won literary merit and acclaim for his vivid descriptions and personification of the countryside, sharing with Thomas Hardy a Western England background and a strong sense of regional setting in his works.[1] Noted for his eye for and sympathy with nature, critics of the time described this as one of the most striking features of his writings.
Blackmore, a popular novelist of the second half of the nineteenth century, often referred to as the "Last Victorian", acted as pioneer of the new romantic movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He may be said to have done for Devon what Sir Walter Scott did for the Highlands and Hardy for Wessex. Blackmore has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred."
Though very popular in his time, Blackmore's work has since been altogether ignored, and his entire body of work, save for his magnum opus Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed considerable popularity since its being published, has gone out of publication. Thus his reputation rests chiefly upon this romantic work, in spite of the fact that it was not his favourite.
“I cannot go through all my thoughts, so as to make them clear to you, nor have I ever dwelt on things, to shape a story of them. I know not where the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to be, nor even how at the present time I feel, or think, or ought to think. If I look for help to those around me, who should tell me right and wrong (being older and much wiser), I meet sometimes with laughter, and at other times with anger......I think; and nothing ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp, and have with any surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering......Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as I am, and fond of peace, and reading), the heiress of this mad domain......You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the weariness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for- I mean none more than any other- and indeed there seems no risk...”
“May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together.”
“...because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? ”