Has Anyone Read " Lorna Doone "?

Discussion in 'Reading & Writing' started by Joe Riley, Oct 17, 2015.

  1. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    While looking through my meager "collection" of old books, I came across "Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor", by R.D. Blackmore. It is an 1889 edition, and I have never read it. I liked it because of the artwork on the cover. I learned today, from my Wife, that she has read it, and plans to read it again.
    Has anyone read it? Would a guy enjoy reading this? ...just asking.;)
    IMG_1659.JPG
     
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    Last edited: Oct 17, 2015
  2. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    It was reputedly Ned Kelly's favourite book and he was a pretty tough fellow!
     
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  3. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Thanks, Tom, I have heard of the Australian Bushranger. I will be reading it, for sure.

    "By his own account, Blackmore relied on a "phonologic" style for his characters' speech, emphasising their accents and word formation.[4] He expended great effort, in all of his novels, on his characters' dialogues and dialects, striving to recount realistically not only the ways, but also the tones and accents, in which thoughts and utterances were formed by the various sorts of people who lived in the Exmoor district in the 17th century".
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Doone
     
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  4. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    There is debate about whether Blackmore invented the name Lorna, but he certainly popularised it. It is, strangely enough, much more common in Scotland that anywhere else.
     
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  5. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    ...and then of course, there came the cookie! Originating, in Pittsburgh, PA, no less!;)
    [​IMG]
    "Christine McIntyre is Lorna Doone in Scotched In Scotland. Nabisco makes the Lorna Doone Cookie. Nabisco says: "No record exists for the exact motivation behind the selection of that name, but in those days shortbread biscuits were considered a product of Scottish heritage, and the Lorna Doone character was symbolic of Scotland." Maybe the short was the inspiration for the cookie"!

    "Lorna Doone is a golden, square-shaped shortbread cookie produced by Nabisco. Introduced in March 1912, it was possibly named after the main character in R. D. Blackmore's 1869 novel, Lorna Doone, but no record exists as to the exact motivation behind the name.

    According to the Howat family legend, the original cookie recipe was given to Nabisco by employee Joe Howat from Pittsburgh, PA. The shortbread recipe was from his mother, Marion Rankin Howat, who was born in Scotland.

    The ingredients in the current version of this cookie include enriched flour, soybean and/or palm oil, sugar, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, corn flour, salt, high fructose corn syrup, baking soda, corn starch, soy lecithin, and artificial flavors.

    Lorna Doone cookies are featured in the poem, "Lorna Doone Last Cookie Song (I Shared it with Gloria)", found in the book Egg Thoughts and Other Frances Songs, by Russell Hoban".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Doone_(cookie)
     
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    Last edited: Oct 21, 2015
  6. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    LORNA DOONE LAST COOKIE SONG (I SHARED IT WITH GLORIA), by Russell Hoben
    [​IMG]

    All the sandwich cookies sweet

    In their frilly paper neat,

    They are gone this afternoon,

    They have left you, Lorna Doone.

    Lorna Doone, Lorna Doone,

    Roaming through the heather,

    Lorna Doone, Lorna Doone,

    We’ll grow old together.

    Chocolate and vanilla creams

    Pass like little tasty dreams

    Eaten up and gone too soon,

    All but you, our Lorna Doone.

    You are plain and you are square

    And your flavor’s only fair.

    Soon there’ll be an empty place

    Where we saw your smiling face.

    Lorna Doone, Lorna Doone,

    You were last but you weren’t wasted.

    Lorna Doone, Lorna Doone,

    We’ll remember how you tasted.




    In honor of the author, who was laid to rest January 4th, 2012.
     
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  7. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Lorna Doone is a well known book, but not one that I have read.
     
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  8. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    One source suggested the Author, named her after a place. Lorne (or Lorn; Scottish Gaelic: Latharn) is an ancient district in the west of Scotland, now part of the Argyll and Bute council area.
     
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  9. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    Plausible...there is a Larne in Northern Ireland and a Laugharne (pronounced Larne) in South Wales, both names of Celtic origin.
     
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  10. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    There is also the Lorne sausage, a type of square sausage that is popular in Scotland. My dictionary tells me that this is probably named after Tommy Lorne, who was a Scottish comedian in the 1920s, long after Lorna Doone was written. Lorne, however, was not his real name, so he may have taken it from the place in Argyll.
     
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  11. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Four Lorne sausages!
    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    I'll see your four Lorne sausages and raise you one Lorne Greene:

    Lorne_Greene_Ben_Cartwright_Bonanza.JPG

    PS: that was a stage name, too.
     
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  13. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    I will yield to "the Voice of Canada", take my "Hoss", and fold! signed...Little Joe.;)
     
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  14. Bobby Cole

    Bobby Cole Supreme Member
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    Although it was an option in high school, I chose Catcher in the Rye for my mandatory reading.
    I have never really had even a small penchant for fiction but have much honor for the great authors of it. If given the choice, and because of their notoriety regarding writing style, Blackmoore, Dickens, Steinbeck, Poe and Longfellow could easily be within my grasp of what most call "good reading."

    Strange. I seriously read only non-fiction but enjoy a fictional movie. Maybe I can find Lorna Doone on youtube.
     
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  15. Tom Locke

    Tom Locke Veteran Member
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    After all the speculation about the names Lorna and Doone, I rather missed the subject of the book itself. It seems to be the only work of Blackmore's that is still published, though he appears to have been quite prolific. I've always seen him as a bit of a forerunner to Thomas Hardy, though perhaps it's just the West Country locations that sway me.
     
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