Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore. With an Introduction by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University This is the only critical edition of this perennially popular story. Sally Shuttleworth’s introduction finds, beneath the idyllic evocation of rural bliss and a tale of love and high adventure, a startling sub-text which rigidly defends Victorian values, and portrays a `manly’ hero constantly having to prove his masculinity to himself.