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Manuscripts of R.D. Blackmore
Display case containing manuscripts of the works of R.D. Blackmore from the collections held in the Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge) (1825–1900) Writer and fruit farmer; the son of a clergyman, Blackmore was educated at Blundell's School, Tiverton, and at Exeter College, Oxford. He was called to the bar, but his epilepsy forced him to take up a country life, first as a schoolmaster, then as a fruit‐grower at Teddington, where he lived till his death. He was happily married to an Irishwoman, Lucy Maguire, whose mother was a laundress. The wedding did not have the approval of Blackmore's family, and barriers of religion and social class thwarting the union of lovers frequently figure in his fiction. He published several volumes of poems and translations from Theocritus and Virgil, but his fame rests almost entirely on one of his novels, Lorna Doone (1869). He wrote thirteen other novels, including Cradock Nowell (1866), The Maid of Sker (1872), Alice Lorraine (1875), and Springhaven (1887). These pastoral tales, stirring in incident and with a slightly grotesque humour, are often ill constructed, and sometimes over lush in style, but their descriptions of lovingly observed climate, wildlife, and vegetation are engaging. Blackmore was a kindly but reserved and eccentric man, absorbed in his experimental fruit farming.
Source: The Oxford Companion to English Literature
Manuscripts of R.D. Blackmore
Display case containing manuscripts of the works of R.D. Blackmore from the collections held in the Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge) (1825–1900) Writer and fruit farmer; the son of a clergyman, Blackmore was educated at Blundell's School, Tiverton, and at Exeter College, Oxford. He was called to the bar, but his epilepsy forced him to take up a country life, first as a schoolmaster, then as a fruit‐grower at Teddington, where he lived till his death. He was happily married to an Irishwoman, Lucy Maguire, whose mother was a laundress. The wedding did not have the approval of Blackmore's family, and barriers of religion and social class thwarting the union of lovers frequently figure in his fiction. He published several volumes of poems and translations from Theocritus and Virgil, but his fame rests almost entirely on one of his novels, Lorna Doone (1869). He wrote thirteen other novels, including Cradock Nowell (1866), The Maid of Sker (1872), Alice Lorraine (1875), and Springhaven (1887). These pastoral tales, stirring in incident and with a slightly grotesque humour, are often ill constructed, and sometimes over lush in style, but their descriptions of lovingly observed climate, wildlife, and vegetation are engaging. Blackmore was a kindly but reserved and eccentric man, absorbed in his experimental fruit farming.
Source: The Oxford Companion to English Literature