This was the beginning of The Maid of Sker – not, in fact, completed until many years later, and eventually published in 1872 - which he himself would come to consider his finest novel. ĭuring a university vacation he made his first attempt at writing a novel. He excelled in classical studies, and later won a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1847. In 1837, Blackmore entered Blundell's School in Tiverton. Having spent much of his childhood in the lush and pastoral "Doone Country" of Exmoor, and along the Badgworthy Water (where there is now a memorial stone in Blackmore's honour), Blackmore came to love the very countryside he immortalised in Lorna Doone. His father married again in 1831, whereupon Richard returned to live with him. Richard Gordon, moved with her to Elsfield rectory, near Oxford. Richard, however, was taken by his aunt, Mary Frances Knight, and after her marriage to the Rev. After this loss John Blackmore moved to Bushey, Herts, then to his native Devon, first to Kings Nympton, then Culmstock, Tor Mohun and later to Ashford, in the same county. His mother died a few months after his birth – the victim of an outbreak of typhus which had occurred in the village. Richard Doddridge Blackmore was born on 7 June 1825 at Longworth in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), one year after his elder brother Henry (1824–1875), where his father, John Blackmore, was Curate-in-charge of the parish.
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