R.D. Blackmore

R. D. Blackmore
R. D. Blackmore was one of the most famous English novelists of his generation.
Born	7 June 1825 Longworth, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), England
Died	20 January 1900(1900-01-20) (aged 74) Teddington, Middlesex, England
Occupation	novelist, horticulturist
Literary movement	Romantic
Notable works	Lorna Doone

Richard Doddridge Blackmore (7 June 1825 – 20 January 1900), known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century. He won acclaim for 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.

Blackmore, often referred to as the "Last Victorian", was a pioneer of the movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred." Apart from his novel Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed continuing popularity, his work has gone out of print.

Richard Doddridge Blackmore was born on 7 June 1825 at Longworth in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), one year after his elder brother Henry (1824–1875), where his father, John Blackmore, was Curate-in-charge of the parish. His mother died a few months after his birth – the victim of an outbreak of typhus which had occurred in the village. After this loss John Blackmore moved to Bushey, Herts, then to his native Devon, first to Kings Nympton, then , Tor Mohun and later to Ashford, in the same county. Richard, however, was taken by his aunt, Mary Frances Knight, and after her marriage to the Rev. Richard Gordon, moved with her to Elsfield rectory, near Oxford. His father married again in 1831, whereupon Richard returned to live with him. Having spent much of his childhood in the lush and pastoral "Doone Country" of Exmoor, and along the Badgworthy Water (where there is now a memorial stone in Blackmore's honour), Blackmore came to love the very countryside he immortalised in Lorna Doone.

In 1837, Blackmore entered Blundell's School in Tiverton. He excelled in classical studies, and later won a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1847. During a university vacation he made his first attempt at writing a novel. This was the beginning of The Maid of Sker – not, in fact, completed until many years later, and eventually published in 1872 - which he himself would come to consider his finest novel.