Anne Thackeray Ritchie
{{Short description|English writer (1837–1919)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=December 2015}}
{{Infobox person
|name = Anne Thackeray Ritchie
|image = File:Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie.jpg
|image_size =
|image_upright =
|alt =
|caption = Portrait of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, 1870
|birth_name = Anne Isabella Thackeray
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1837|06|09|df=yes}}
|birth_place = London, England
|death_date = {{Death date and age|1919|02|26|1837|06|09|df=yes}}
|death_place = Freshwater, England
|occupation = Writer
|education =
|spouse = {{marriage|Richmond Ritchie|1877|1912|end=his death}}
|children = 2
|father = William Makepeace Thackeray
|mother = Isabella Gethin Shawe
|relatives = Harriet Stephen (sister)
}}
Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie ({{nee}} Thackeray; 9 June 1837 – 26 February 1919), eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, was an English writer, whose several novels were appreciated in their time and made her a central figure on the late Victorian literary scene. She is noted especially as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for short fiction that places fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu. Her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond introduced into English the proverb, "If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn."{{sfnp|Ritchie|1886|p=[https://books.google.ch/books?id=NVcNAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA95 95]}}
Life
Anne Isabella Thackeray was born in London, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray and his wife Isabella Gethin Shawe (1816–1893). She had two younger sisters: Jane, born in 1839, who died at eight months, and Harriet Marian (nicknamed "Minny") (1840–1875), who married Leslie Stephen in 1869. Anne, whose father called her Anny, spent her childhood in France and England, where she and her sister were accompanied by the future poet Anne Evans.Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Batsford, 1990), "Anne Evans", p. 346.
In 1877, she married her cousin, Richmond Ritchie, who was 17 years her junior.{{Cite ODNB |id=35764 |first=Chandrika |last=Kaul |title=Ritchie, Sir Richmond Thackeray Willoughby}} They had two children, Hester and Billy. She was a step-aunt of Virginia Woolf, who penned an obituary of her in the Times Literary Supplement. She is also thought to have inspired the character of Mrs Hilbery in Woolf's Night and Day.D. J. Taylor, "Ritchie , Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie (1837–1919)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online editor: Lawrence Goldman, May 2006.
Literary career
In 1863, Anne Isabella published The Story of Elizabeth with immediate success. Several other works followed:
- The Village on the Cliff (1867)
- To Esther, and Other Sketches (1869)
- Old Kensington (1873)
- Toilers and Spinsters, and Other Essays (1874)
- Bluebeard's Keys, and Other Stories (1874)
- Five Old Friends (1875)
- Madame de Sévigné (1881), a biography with literary excerpts[http://www.publishinghistory.com/foreign-classics-for-english-readers-blackwood.html Foreign Classics for English Readers (William Blackwood & Sons) - Book Series List. Retrieved 3 June 2017.]
In other writings, she made unusual use of old folk stories to depict modern situations and occurrences, such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood.
She also wrote the following:
- Miss Angel (1875)
- From An Island (1877), a semi-autobiographical novella
- Miss Williamson's Divagations (1881)
- A Book of Sibyls: Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Opie, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen (1883), a collection of biographies concerning women writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
- {{citation |last=Ritchie |first=Anne Thackeray |display-authors=0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NVcNAAAAYAAJ |title=Mrs. Dymond |date=1886 }} (1885; reprinted 1886 & 1890)
References
=Citations=
{{Reflist|30em}}
=Bibliography =
{{refbegin}}
- Aplin, John. The Inheritance of Genius – A Thackeray Family Biography, 1798–1875, Lutterworth Press (2010). {{ISBN|978-07188-9224-1}}
- Aplin, John. Memory and Legacy – A Thackeray Family Biography, 1876–1919, Lutterworth Press (2011). {{ISBN|978-07188-9225-8}}
- Aplin, John (editor). The Correspondence and Journals of the Thackeray Family, 5 vols., Pickering & Chatto (2011).
- {{Cite book |last1=Auerbach |first1=Nina |last2=Knoepflmacher |first2=U.C. |title=Forbidden Journeys |year=1993 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-03204-3}}
- {{Cite book |last=Martin |first=Ann |title=Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed Modernism's Fairy Tales |year=2006 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=0-8020-9086-9}}
- {{Cite book |author=Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie |title=Chapters from Some Memoirs |year=1999 |publisher=Adamant Media Corporation |isbn=0-543-92098-4}}
- [http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00081994 "Introduction" by Anne Thackeray Ritchie] in Our Village, fully and openly available online in the [http://ufdc.ufl.edu/baldwin Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature Digital Collection]
- {{Cite book |last=Garnett |first=Henrietta |authorlink= Henrietta Garnett |title=Anny: A Life of Anny Thackeray Ritchie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t6cca0xnAKMC |year=2004 |publisher=Chatto & Windus |location=London |isbn=0-7011-7129-4}}
- {{Cite book |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first=Abigail Burnham |editor2-last=Maynard |editor2-first=John |title=Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters |date=1994 |publisher=Ohio State Univ. Press |location=Columbus |isbn=9780814206386 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SHnxiQMZKhwC }}
{{refend}}
External links
{{Commons category|Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie}}
{{wikisource|works=or}}
- {{Gutenberg author |id=34609|name=Anne Thackeray Ritchie}}
- {{Gutenberg author |id=34609|name=Miss Thackeray}}
- {{Internet Archive author |name=Anne Thackeray Ritchie}}
- {{Librivox author |id=7194}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20110727225524/http://www.ohiostatepress.org/Books/Complete%20PDFs/Shankman%20Anne/02.pdf Genealogy of Anne Thackeray Ritchie]
- {{UK National Archives ID}}
- [http://www.victorianweb.org/books/aplin.html Anne Isabella Thackeray at Victorian Web]
{{William Makepeace Thackeray|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritchie, Anne Isabella Thackeray}}
Category:19th-century English novelists
Category:19th-century English women writers
Category:19th-century English short story writers
Category:English women short story writers
Category:English children's writers
Category:Victorian women writers