Dartmoor Cycle Continued...

In writing these novels, Eden Phillpotts has endeavored to realize the undeniable relationship between man and landscape; it was “his conviction that humans are part of the ceaseless natural struggle.  They are subject to the same drives as all other organisms, and influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the environment in which they exist” (Milton, 207).  To this effect, each novel reveals some aspect of life on Dartmoor so that while there is detail in each story that illuminates a specific community, the novels as a whole also aim to make up a composite picture of life on the moor.  From the small stannery town of Chagford featured in Children of the Mist, to the little farming hamlet of Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Widecombe Fair, each community has its own identity that is reinforced by its inhabitants. 

It is also through the characters of the novels that Phillpotts was afforded the opportunity to express his own, “non-Christian”, personal philosophy that in the end, life is positive and change is ultimately triumphant, taking his influence from Nietzsche.  Thus, although some of his novels are tragic, he has still described them as “triumphant”, adhering to the belief that sometime in the future, the “order of things” will improve (Milton, 205).

Phillpotts’s characters go far to illustrate this personal philosophy.  They simplistically embrace life, whether good or bad, with the ultimate hope that things will improve in the end.  For example, in the novel, Children of the Mist, the protagonist, Will Blanchard, is initially thwarted in his desire to marry his sweetheart and thus decides to leave the immediate community in order to make something of himself so that one day he will be able to realize his desire and marry his beloved.  Phillpotts’s characters are all ordinary people: farmers, innkeepers, doctors, millers, husbands, wives, daughters, and sons.  They struggle with the same dilemmas and questions of self-awareness and identity that plague all humans, but it is Phillpotts’s belief that in living on Dartmoor and being so in-tune with their natural surroundings, these characters are able to readily connect with that natural instinct within themselves.

Evolution is a buzzword for Phillpotts in these novels; this was Phillpotts’s true ‘religion’.  Each novel addresses evolution in relation to its characters as well as its landscape and the subsequent toll it takes on all organic matter.  Time and again, Phillpotts returns to this theme “that all matter, organic and inorganic, is subject to change over time, and conforms to the same pattern of development and decay […and] both the impact of human activity and the ravages of climate apparent on the landscape are part of this evolutionary process” (213).
For Phillpotts, Dartmoor is a miniature model of the larger world and “the characters’ stories are local forms of the perpetual struggle for survival” represented in his larger philosophy (214-15).  However, Phillpotts also sees Dartmoor as an ideal location for his novels because of his belief that “this dreadful, primitive silence and loneliness in the lap of Nature” provides an ideal space away from the materialism of the city where his characters are free to follow their instinctual inclinations (Widecombe Fair, 397). 

The Novels of the Dartmoor Cycle

Children of the Mist (1898)

Sons of the Morning (1900)

The River (1902)

The Secret Woman (1905)

The Portreeve (1906)

The Whirlwind (1907)

The Mother (1908)

The Virgin in Judgment (1908)

The Three Brothers (1909)

The Thief of Virtue (1910)

Demeter’s Daughter (1911)

The Beacon (1911)

The Forest on the Hill (1912)

Widecombe Fair (1913)

Brunel’s Tower (1915)*

Miser’s Money (1920)*

Orphan Dinah (1920)*

Children of Men (1923)*

*Denotes novels not originally planned as part of the Dartmoor Cycle

Click here to see a map of where each novel was set on Dartmoor