Christowell

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Christowell

Christowell by R D Blackmore - 1891 book cover.jpg

Cover of the 1891 edition
Author R. D. Blackmore
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Publication date
1882

Christowell: a Dartmoor tale is a three-volume novel by R. D. Blackmore published in 1882. It is set in the fictional village of Christowell on the eastern edge of Dartmoor.

R. D. Blackmore English novelist

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, 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.

Dartmoor Area of moorland in south Devon, England

Dartmoor is a moor in southern Devon, England. Protected by National Park status as Dartmoor National Park, it covers 954 km2 (368 sq mi).

Contents

Title

The title derives from the village of Christow on Dartmoor. Although Blackmore was keen to point out that "Christow is not my Christowell: though I took the name partly from it ... my Christowell is a compound of several places." [1]

Christow village in Devon, England

Christow is a village and civil parish in the Teignbridge district of Devon, England, about 12 miles (19 km) southwest of Exeter. The village is in the Teign Valley, just off the B3193 road that links Chudleigh and Dunsford. Christow is on the eastern edge of Dartmoor National Park.

Plot introduction

The complex and picturesque life which goes on in the parish of Christowell is the theme of the novel. [2] The story begins with the garden where resides “Captain Larks,” alias Mr. Arthur, who is neither Mr. Arthur nor "Captain Larks," [3] but a mysterious soldier who renounced his own good name to save one who was his brother and fellow officer from disgrace. [4] Misfortune has driven him into retirement, and so he lives among his flowers and fruit. [3] Nobody knows anything about him, save the clergyman, Parson Short. [3] Mr. Arthur has a daughter, Rose, who, after visiting him as a child during her holidays for several years, at last comes to live with him at his cottage. [3] It is when she appears, however, that her father's troubles may be said to begin; for she falls in love with Jack Westcombe the son of a retired officer, whom Rose’s father declines to see, [3] conscious of the cloud that rests on himself. [4]

Among other characters there are Pugsley the carrier, Sir Joseph Touchwood, who has made a fortune out of shoes supplied by contract to Lord Wellington's army, Julia Touchwood, and a Richard ("Dicky") Touchwood who achieves small honors at Cambridge, but greater ones at home as a rat-catcher. [2] The villain of the plot is a Mr. Gaston who attempts every crime from murder to bribery to compass his ends, and succeeds in hoodwinking every one for some time and keeping Mr. Arthur out of his lawful inheritance. [4]

Publication

Christowell was serialized in Good Words from January to December 1881. [5] It was then published as a three-volume novel in 1882. [5]

<i>Good Words</i>

Good Words was a 19th-century monthly periodical in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1860 by Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan. Its first editor was Norman Macleod. After his death in 1872, it was edited by his brother, Donald Macleod, though there is some evidence that at this time the publishing was taken over by W. Isbister & Co.

The three-volume novel was a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the nineteenth century. It was a significant stage in the development of the modern novel as a form of popular literature in Western culture.

Reception

The novel received fairly good reviews. The Oxford Magazine stated that the novel was "nearly equal" to his others, but mentioned the "weakness [which] lies in the artistic treatment of the details of the plot." [4] The Academy complained that "Blackmore's characters are too consistently clever", but netheless opined that "it is a book to be enjoyed leisurely". [6] Blackwood's Magazine wrote that "he is never more entertaining than at this homely level, on page after page, which in other books we should skip, but which here we enjoy as we should a walk in the company of the most genial and gentle of humorists." [3]

The Oxford Magazine is a review magazine and newspaper published in Oxford, England. It was established in 1883 and published weekly during Oxford University terms.

The Academy was a review of literature and general topics published in London from 1869 to 1902, founded by Charles Appleton.

<i>Blackwoods Magazine</i> British magazine

Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn. The journal was unsuccessful and Blackwood fired Pringle and Cleghorn and relaunched the journal as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine under his own editorship. The journal eventually adopted the shorter name and from the relaunch often referred to itself as Maga. The title page bore the image of George Buchanan, a 16th-century Scottish historian, religious and political thinker.

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References

  1. Waldo Hilary Dunn, (1956), R. D. Blackmore : the author of Lorna Doone, a biography, page 225
  2. 1 2 The Literary World, (1881), Volume 12, page 452
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Blackwood's Magazine, (1882), Volume 131, page 390
  4. 1 2 3 4 The Oxford Magazine, (1883), Volume 1, page 184
  5. 1 2 "Richard Doddridge Blackmore" entry in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: 1800-1900, (1999), Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0521391008
  6. The Academy, (1881), Volume 20, page 451