Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie


Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, née Thackeray, was an English writer and the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Her several novels were highly regarded in their time and made her a central figure in the late Victorian literary scene. She is best remembered today as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for short fiction that places traditional fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu. Her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond contains the earliest English-language use of the proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life."

Life

Anne Isabella Thackeray was born in London, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray and his wife Isabella Gethin Shawe. She had two younger sisters: Jane, born in 1839, who died at eight months, and Harriet Marian, 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.
She married her cousin Richmond Ritchie, seventeen years her junior, in 1877. The couple 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 believed to have inspired the character of Mrs Hilbery in Woolf's Night and Day.

Literary career

In 1863, Anne Isabella published The story of Elizabeth with immediate success.
Several works followed:
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 published the following novels: