Alice Lorraine: a tale of the South Downs is a sensation novel by R. D. Blackmore, published in 1875. Set in Sussex and Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, the novel recounts the divergent tales of the eponymous heroine and her brother in their efforts to save the noble Lorraine family from ruin.Plot summaryThe story is set in the early years of the 19th century. The hero and heroine, brother and sister, are children of Sir Roland Lorraine, representative of a very ancient family. Hilary, while studying for the bar in London, falls in love with the daughter of a Kentish farmer, the sister of his fellow-pupil. He confesses his folly to his father, who at once buys for him a commission in a regiment of foot on service in Spain.The young man distinguishes himself at Badajos, and is on the high road to fame, when he falls under the spell of a Spanish countess, and forgets for a time his promise to the Kentish girl.Through the countess's treachery he loses £50,000, military funds, with which he is entrusted, and leaves the army.Meantime his sister has been fighting a severe battle at home-defending herself against a plot to make her the wife of a drunken fellow named Chapman. Hilary comes home; Mabel, the Kentish girl, is sent for, and matters are serene with all but Alice on the day appointed for her wedding. When the hour for the ceremony approaches, she walks out and throws herself into the river, is carried a mile, rescued and resuscitated...Richard Doddridge Blackmore (7 June 1825 - 20 January 1900), 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.Blackmore, often referred to as the "Last Victorian," was a pioneer of the movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred." Apart from his novel Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed continuing popularity, his work has gone out of print.BiographyRichard Doddridge Blackmore was born on 7 June 1825 at Longworth in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), one year after his elder brother Henry (1824-1875), where his father, John Blackmore, was Curate-in-charge of the parish. His mother died a few months after his birth - the victim of an outbreak of typhus which had occurred in the village. 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.[2] Richard, however, was taken by his aunt, Mary Frances Knight, and after her marriage to the Rev. Richard Gordon, moved with her to Elsfield rectory, near Oxford. His father married again in 1831, whereupon Richard returned to live with him. Having spent much of his childhood in the lush and pastoral "Doone Country" of Exmoor, and along the Badgworthy Water (where there is now a memorial stone in Blackmore's honour), Blackmore came to love the very countryside he immortalised in Lorna Doone.