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.

After this loss John Blackmore moved to Bushey, Herts, then to his native Devon, first to Kings Nympton, then Culmstock, Tor Mohun and later to Ashford, in the same county.

Ill-health, however, prevented him from continuing legal work as a full-time occupation and in 1854, he took the post of classics master at Wellesley House Grammar School, Hampton Road, Twickenham.

Knight, Rector of Neath, Glamorgan, died and left his nephew a sum of money which enabled him to realise a long-held ambition of possessing a house in the country encompassed by a large garden.

The novel's overwhelming popularity was only secured when it appeared as a one-volume edition, as distinct from the unsuccessful three-volume form in which it was originally published.

[8] Hardy would write to Blackmore expressing his appreciation of the book; but the two men were divided by a certain rivalry as well as differences in temperament and opinions.

[10] Blackmore followed Sir Walter Scott in often setting his characters against a significant historical background, as with Springhaven (1887) and the Napoleonic Wars; his descriptive powers perhaps exceeded his narrative structures.

Charles Deayton, a Teddington merchant, is recorded as stating to a visitor— "He is not a social man, and seems wedded to his garden in summer and his book writing in winter.

Although he was of a retiring disposition, preoccupied with the demands of writing and fruit growing, he did, in fact, have a number of very intimate friends whom he met regularly.

Blackmore movingly ended his short Christmas letter of 1899 as follows:[2] "I have fallen away during the last month, having taken obstinate chills, & caring neither to eat nor drink, nor speak.

]"Upon his death at the age of 74, a well-attended funeral in Teddington Cemetery, conducted by his old friend, the Reverend Robert Borland, was held in his honour.

The result of work by a committee including his good friend, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and James Barrie, it bore an address written by another writer from Devon, Eden Phillpotts, and the portrait was carved by Harry Hems of Exeter.

[11] A reduced copy of the memorial was also mounted in Oare Church in Somerset, where Lorna Doone was married; above it in the cathedral was a stained glass window depicting David, Jonathan, and Samson—the archetypes of courage, love, and strength, respectively.

The house itself was later demolished and Doone Close, Blackmore's Grove and Gomer Gardens were built, referencing the novelist's associations with Teddington.