Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor (1869) is a novel by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. Praised by some of Victian England’s leading authors, including Robert Louis Stevenson, George Gissing, and Thomas Hardy, Lorna Doone was published anonymously and sold poorly in its first edition. Republished the following year in an inexpensive format, the book became a huge success for Blackmore, and remains his only novel in print. Raised in the hill country of Exmoor, John Ridd is forced to take over his family farm at a young age following his father’s murder at the hands of the Doone clan. Determined to succeed, he endeavors to do right by his mother and younger siblings, raising their crop by the banks of Badgworthy Water. Ready to put the past behind him, he unexpectedly falls for the beautiful Lorna, the granddaughter of Sir Ensor Doone. When Ensor dies, the Doone estate passes to her cousin Carver, who believes he is destined to marry Lorna. Forced to flee to John’s farm at Plover’s Barrows, Lorna—whose true identity endangers her life—hides from her cousin Carver at the home of a family which knows all too well the dangers of trusting a Doone. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Richard Doddridge Blackmore’s Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor is a classic work of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. This version includes an audio book: listen to the story as you read. Retold for Learners of English by David Penn. One winter’s day in 1673 young John Ridd is riding home from school, across the wild lonely hills of Exmoor. He has to pass Doone valley – a dangerous place, as the Doones are famous robbers and murderers. All Exmoor lives in fear of the Doones. At home there is sad news waiting for young John, and he learns that he has good reason to hate the Doones. But in the years to come he meets Lorna Doone, with her lovely smile and big dark eyes. And soon he is deeply, hopelessly, in love . . .

Barbara Stanwyck (1907–1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women—and America's highest-paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee, winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy. Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art, exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as Ladies of Leisure, The Miracle Woman, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen; her Pre-Code movies Night Nurse and Baby Face; and her classic roles in Stella Dallas, Remember the Night, The Lady Eve, and Double Indemnity. After making more than eighty films in Hollywood, she revived her career by turning to television, where her role in the 1960s series The Big Valley renewed her immense popularity. Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in, leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk, All I Desire and There's Always Tomorrow, and two outrageous westerns, The Furies and Forty Guns. The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs—at the very top of her profession—and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.

Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor is a novel by English author Richard Doddridge Blackmore, published in 1869. It is a romance based on a group of historical characters and set in the late 17th century in Devon and Somerset, particularly around the East Lyn Valley area of Exmoor.