Fiction, non-fiction and poetry with Dartmoor themes
Our Dartmoor lists 20 authors and writers on and around Dartmoor.
Use the map or the list below to see where each one is.
Irish Catholic priest and novelist (1852-1913), Canon of Cloyne, who served as supply chaplain at Dartmoor Prison while in the Plymouth diocese.
Paul Rendell was born in Plymouth and became enthusiastic about Dartmoor from an early age after being taken on numerous outings by his parents. Burrator and Sheepstor were two of the favourite places they went as a family.Very early he found he was fascinated by the moor's industrial archaeology and its wildlife. Because he was dyslexic his schooldays were not very easy for him but he struggled on until school leaving age.
Widecombe-in-the-Moor
Dartmoor poetry and collaborative art celebrating the landscape through verse and photography.
Dartmoor-raised author, Wiccan priestess and witchcraft teacher whose books explore nature, magic and the wheel of the year.
Teddington
Victorian novelist (1825-1900), author of Lorna Doone and of the Dartmoor novel Christowell (1882).
Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Newton Abbot
Exeter land surveyor and antiquary, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, who lived at Blackslade in Widecombe-in-the-Moor and edited the 1876 parish book Things New and Old.
Plymouth
Robert Hunt (1807-1887), Devonport-born mineralogist and antiquarian, who collected the legends of the West of England.
Crediton
Plymouth bookseller turned clergyman (1793-1853), vicar of Crediton, who wrote the Perambulation of Dartmoor (1848).
Archaeologist and author of the English Heritage Book of Dartmoor (1997), whose fieldwork is credited in many Historic England records of Dartmoor monuments.
Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography“Many sweet beauties of tempered clime flower the skirts of the desolate moor, and the sweetest of these is Christowell.”
Also on Our DartmoorCross Gate Cross — A stone cross standing sentinel on the open moor, marking an ancient route across Dartmoor's high plateau.
