Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore

"If anybody cares to read a simple tale told simply ..."  With these words Blackmore's honest narrator and protagonist, John Ridd, begins his intriguing story of love, hatred and endeavour.

The "simple tale" begins in Somerset and Devon in the 1670s.  King Charles II has been the king since the monarchy was restored in 1660.  The tumults of the English Civil War and Cromwell's Protectorship are over but their consequences are still being felt.  

The Doones, formerly lords in the north of England, now landless after the war, have become a clan of outlaws and brigands on Exmoor in Devon and Somerset. Operating from their fortified hideout in the inaccessible valley of Badgworthy Water, they pillage the countryside for food, money and wives.  When John Ridd is still but a child, his father is murdered by one of the Doones.  Despite this calamity, John and his mother carry on business at the family farm and John is able to gain an education.  As he grows, John encounters a beautiful girl near the headwaters of the moor: she is Lorna, the granddaughter of the Doone clan's patriarch.  It is love at first sight for the pair, but are they destined to become star-crossed lovers?  How can John, a lone and virtuous youth, ever hope to wrest Lorna away from the murderous Doones?

In the course of the tale, which spans some fifteen years, we meet a host of memorable characters, including John and Lorna; John's nervous mother; Lorna's eloquent and unscrupulous uncle (known as the Counsellor); Tom Faggus, a dashing highwayman; Jeremy Stickles, the King's hungry and loquacious messenger; the capricious and blood-thirsty Judge Jefferys; and the sadistic Carver Doone.  Love, tenderness, honesty and goodwill are by turns set against violence, deceit, double-crosses, and political uprisings.

The narrative provides the reader with action and respites in pleasing proportions.  The characters, while tending to be a bit (or sometimes more than a bit) one-sided in their virtues and failings, are believable and engaging.  The natural world is evoked through charming and beautiful descriptive passages, providing a solid and memorable setting for the story.  John Ridd, for example, has his emotions stirred by the beauty Lorna's 'care and diligence' has wrought in her cottage garden, and he says to us:

Even the breathing of the wind, soft and gentle in and out, moving things that need not move, and passing longer-stalked ones, even this was not enough among the flush of fragrance, to tell a man the reason of his quiet satisfaction.  But so it shall forever be.  As the river we float upon (with wine, and flowers, and music) is nothing at the well-spring but a bubble without reason.

At over 600 pages, Lorna Doone is a long book; however, the pleasure to be had from this lively romance set on the English moors makes the tale all too short.