R. D. Blackmore

Exmoor in the 1680s: the Doones ride down from their valley to rob and murder as they please, and John Ridd - farmer, wrestler, plain narrator - loves the girl they stole as a child. Blackmore gives the landscape as much attention as the lovers, and the winter flood on the Lyn is the best-written weather in Victorian fiction. Paintings of moorland, rebellion skirmish and Devon farmstead, with Gilded Library ornament of heather, flintlock and oak.