Lorna Doone

by R. D. Blackmore

One winter's day in 1673 young John Ridd is riding home from school, across the wild lonely hills of Exmoor. He has to pass Doone valley - a dangerous place, as the Doones are famous robbers and murderers. All Exmoor lives in fear of the Doones. At home there is sad news waiting for young John, and he learns that he has good reason to hate the Doones. But in the years to come he meets Lorna Doone, with her lovely smile and big dark eyes. And soon he is deeply, hopelessly, in love ...

Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900) was for a while a schoolteacher and then became a fruit farmer. He wrote fourteen novels, but Lorna Doone, published in 1869 and set in the seventeenth century, is his only famous book. The characters of John Ridd and Tom Faggus are based on real people who lived at the time.