Clara Vaughan, Volume 3 (of 3)

Clara Vaughan is a sensation novel by R. D. Blackmore, who was later to achieve lasting fame for another Romantic novel, Lorna Doone. It was written in 1853 and published anonymously in 1864. It was Blackmore's first novel. The novel was generally well received by the public, though some reviewers at the time believed it to have been written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and criticised its author for not knowing about the law. Clara Vaughan, which takes place in the mid-19th century, is the story of the eponymous heroine, an only child whose father is mysteriously murdered when she is a young girl. As a young woman, she sets out to uncover the identity of her father's killer, and for this reason the novel is often classed among the first detective novels in English. In addition to this overarching theme, there are several subplots involving family secrets, romances, and questions of familial inheritance... 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. BiographyRichard 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. 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.[2] 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. His father married again in 1831, whereupon Richard returned to live with him. 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.