Dariel, a Romance of Surrey

by R.D. Blackmore, Chris Hammond (illustrator)

Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900) fathered the new romantic movement in English novels. In "Dariel" he uses the prose of living landscape to spin a forbidden romance.

Genres: British Literature, Classics

505 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1897

About the author

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, referred to most commonly as R.D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of his generation. Over the course of his career, Blackmore achieved a close following around the world. He won literary merit and acclaim for his vivid descriptions and personification of the countryside, sharing with Thomas Hardy a Western England background and a strong sense of regional setting in his works.[1] Noted for his eye for and sympathy with nature, critics of the time described this as one of the most striking features of his writings.

Blackmore, a popular novelist of the second half of the nineteenth century, often referred to as the "Last Victorian", acted as pioneer of the new romantic movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He may be said to have done for Devon what Sir Walter Scott did for the Highlands and Hardy for Wessex. Blackmore has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred."

Though very popular in his time, Blackmore's work has since been altogether ignored, and his entire body of work, save for his magnum opus Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed considerable popularity since its being published, has gone out of publication. Thus his reputation rests chiefly upon this romantic work, in spite of the fact that it was not his favourite.

Reviews

[Tweety · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very similar to Lorna Doone, but not as long ago and with Dariel playing a smaller part in the tale, I almost feel that this should have been called George, not Dariel.

Any way, we have foreigners with a beautiful daughter, twins who are enemies, an evil cousin, mistaken identities and misunderstandings. We travel from England to Russia. There's also a side story of George's sister, she's a lot like John Ridd's sister Annie, and there's the brilliant Sûr Imar, who lives his life to make up for the past.

[Surreysmum · Rating 2 out of 5]

[These notes were made in 1983. I read this in an 1896 edition:]. Written in the first person, this is a book in which a curiously limited Englishman passes from his realistic home to a world of out-and-out fantasy: caves and mountain tribes of warlike robbers, emerald mines, and switched-name intrigues. The link is the young lady in the title role, who turns out to be a Princess; nonetheless, she marries our conservative Englishman (who has distinct views on Free Trade). It's an entertaining read, tho' whether it properly hangs together as a novel, I'm not entirely sure. Certainly there's a rather unfortunate clash between the "realistic" characters - the narrator, his sister Grace, and her stockbroker suitor - and the type figures - the noble foreign prince Sur Imar, his beautiful daughter Dariel, and their evil relations.