Lorna Doone

Exmoor in the 1680s: the Doones, a clan of outlawed gentry, ride down from their valley to rob and murder as they please, and a yeoman's son who saw them kill his father falls in love with the girl they are raising as their own. Blackmore grew fruit in Teddington and insisted the market garden mattered more than the writing; this 1869 romance made Exmoor a place people visit, and John Ridd's voice — slow, literal, immovable — carries all thirteen hundred pages.