Explore R. D. Blackmore books at New West Press.

R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone brings romance and family conflict into the rugged setting of seventeenth-century Exmoor. John Ridd's attachment to Lorna becomes inseparable from the danger associated with the Doone clan and the wider tensions surrounding their lives. This collection centers on Blackmore's historical romance, where landscape is closely linked with movement, isolation, and risk. Readers can follow the love story while considering how inherited hostility complicates a person's judgment of another individual. The contrast between domestic hopes and violent surroundings gives the narrative a sustained source of tension.

Historical fiction offers a way to encounter an earlier world through the experiences of individual characters. These stories invite discussion of how private loyalties intersect with public events, and how a novelist makes the past feel immediate. Reading alongside a timeline or historical account can help separate invented episodes from documented events while preserving the pleasure of the narrative itself.