Tales from the Telling-House
1896
Blackmore returns to the wind-blasted cliffs and secret combes of Exmoor in this collection of tales set in the same rugged border country that made Lorna Doone immortal. The opening story follows Sylvia Ford and her steadfast father Sylvester, simple folk whose lives shatter when they collide with the notorious Doone clan. Across these pages, ordinary people face extraordinary peril: outlaw violence, rigid class hierarchies, and the indifferent cruelty of a landscape that is both beautiful and dangerous. Blackmore writes with the same muscular prose and deep love of West Country terrain that made him famous, rendering moors and coastline as vivid as any character. The stories pulse with adventure, moral tension, and the quiet heroism of people who refuse to break. For readers who wept at Lorna Doone, these tales offer another chance to lose yourself in Blackmore's singular world, where honor costs everything and the land itself seems to breathe.
