Had Blackmore written it in the seventeenth century, or in modern times, he probably would have done so similarly to this updated version and built on the existing innuendo. They were especially scandalous in the prudish Victorian times of the author. But is his love really dead?Īlthough Lorna Doone is perceived as a romance, it is set in the 1600s, when writings about sexual life at the court and personal diaries such as those of Pepys could be incredibly graphic, even by today’s standards. By some critics it has been esteemed one of the great pieces of English fiction, but this praise is undoubtedly excessive. He is just a boy when his father is slain by the Doones, a lawless clan inhabiting wild Exmoor on the border of Somerset and Devon. Just as they are married in Oare church, Carver Doone shoots Lorna at the altar and John, believing her dead, pursues and kills him. LORNA DOONE, by Richard Doddridge Blackmore, published in 1869, was one of the earliest and by far the most popular of all Blackmores dozen or more novels. First published in 1869, Lorna Doone is the story of John Ridd, a farmer who finds love amid the religious and social turmoil of seventeenth-century England. He is granted a royal pardon, and later Lorna is allowed to join him at his Exmoor farm. But the Monmouth Rebellion finds John wrongly accused of treason and he has to clear his name in London, where he finds Lorna once more and where their love is rekindled. John helps Lorna escape, but circumstances lead to the discovery that she is not a Doone after all, and the newfound heiress moves. John is besotted with Lorna, the granddaughter of the head of the Doone clan, who is to be forced to marry the evil Carver Doone. 13,563 Ratings First published in 1869, Lorna Doone is the story of John Ridd, a farmer who finds love amid the religious and social turmoil of seventeenth-century England.

On the border of the English counties of Devon and Somerset, John Ridd’s father is a yeoman farmer murdered in cold blood by a member of the notorious Doone family.

Author of lorna doone