Blackmore's one famous story gave a name to a brand of cookies, to several British pubs, and to hundreds of baby girls born throughout the English-speaking world near the turn of the century. Lorna Doone (1869) even caused a legendary place--the "Doone...

I see the adder just in time. Camouflaged in the dappled light beneath the bracken, it lies as still and straight as a twig on the stony Exmoor path. In another second my right foot would have trodden on its tail and the snake...

Richard Dodderidge Blackmore was born in Berkshire in 1825 and lived for most of his life in Teddington, Middlesex, where he died in 1900. He spent his childhood in Devon, educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton. A shy boy with a passionate interest in...