Publisher's Synopsis
Cradock Nowell: a tale of the New Forest is a three-volume novel by R. D. Blackmore published in 1866. Set in the New Forest and in London, it follows the fortunes of Cradock Nowell who is thrown out of his family home by his father following the suspicious death of Cradock's twin brother Clayton. It was Blackmore's second novel, and the novel he wrote prior to his most famous work Lorna Doone. The story introduces twin brothers, Cradock and Clayton Nowell, whose nurse forgets which is the elder, the rosette by which she had distinguished them having fallen to the ground. She settles it to her own satisfaction, and the boys grow up under the care of their father, Sir Cradock Nowell, and their father's friend, John Rosedew, the rector. Cradock falls in love with love Amy Rosedew, the rector's daughter. When the brothers are on the threshold of adulthood, an unwelcome guest comes in the person of a regimental surgeon, who had attended at the birth of the twins, and he discovers the mistake of the nurse. Not long afterwards the older brother, the one who had just stepped into his brother's place, is discovered shot dead in a lonely coppice, while the younger brother Cradock, with both barrels of his gun discharged, is standing close beside him. The father believes his son guilty, and drives him from his presence. The rest of the tale is chiefly taken up by the account of what becomes of Cradock Nowell, and how at length he is restored to his home and to his father. Cradock Nowell received rather mixed reviews. The Athenaeum praised it for being "a clever novel, decidedly original in style and mode of treatment" as well as for its "excellent descriptions of forest scenery" but then noted that "the style is overlaid with mannerisms and affectation; the author is in love with inverted forms of phraseology, which are not English idioms; and he delights in far-fetched words and pedantic epithets." The Westminster Review liked "the way in which he manages descriptions not merely of natural scenery, but of any other kind" but complained about the "muscular brutality" to be found the final two volumes.Nevertheless the Dictionary of National Biography noted that "Cradock Nowell is one of the best of Blackmore's heroes, and in Amy Rosedew he gave the world one of the most bewitching of heroines."...... Richard Doddridge Blackmore (7 June 1825 - 20 January 1900), known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century. He won acclaim for 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. Blackmore, often referred to as the "Last Victorian", was a pioneer of the movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred." Apart from his novel Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed continuing popularity, his work has gone out of print. Biography: 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.[2] His mother died a few months after his birth - the victim of an outbreak of typhus which had occurred in the village. 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. Richard, however, was taken by his aunt, Mary Frances Knight, and after her marriage to the Rev. Richard Gordon, moved with her to Elsfield rectory, near Oxford....
