Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, 1837-1919

English novelist; daughter of W. M. Thackeray.

Ann Isabella Ritchie was the elder daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1861), a well-known Victorian novelist. Anne was a prolific novelist, essayist and writer of memoirs. By 1875, The Works of Miss Thackeray had been published in eight volumes (Smith, Elder & Company), extended to 15 volumes by 1866. Most of her critical essays appeared in The Cornhill Magazine . Her first contribution appeared in the magazine's first year, 1860, and most of her fiction appeared serially in the magazine including, The Village on the Cliff , Old Kensington , Miss Angel and Mrs. Dymond . She died in 1919.

English author and daughter of Thackeray.

English novelist; daughter of W.M. Thackeray.

English novelist and daughter of Thackeray.

English novelist and biographer.

English author; daughter of W.M. Thackeray.

Gerin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Monsarrat, Ann. An Uneasy Victorian: Thackeray the Man, 1811–1863. London, Cassell, 1980. Biographical details were also obtained from the collection.

One of the most prolific and beloved novelists of the Victorian Era, William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Alipur, India, on July 18, 1811, the only child of Richmond Thackeray, a successful administrator for the East India Company, and his wife, Anne Becher. Thackeray’s father passed away four years later, and young William was sent to boarding school in London. Many of his early experiences in India and later in boarding school found their way into several of his popular works, including Vanity Fair and The Newcomes

After his premature departure from Cambridge University and a half-hearted attempt at law school in 1834, Thackeray moved to Paris to concentrate on his art. While studying there, he met and married Isabella Getkin Creach Shawe (1818–1893). The couple had three daughters, Anne Isabella, Harriet Marrian, and Jane who died at age eighteen months. Soon after her daughter’s death, Isabella Thackeray suffered a nervous breakdown from which she never recovered. Thackeray was then left with the responsibility of raising two young daughters and supporting his wife who would remain in various sanitoriums for the rest of her life.

When Thackeray learned that Robert Seymour was unable to finish the illustrations for Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, he immediately volunteered his services. Dickens chose someone else, however, and this decision led Thackeray to turn to his writing for financial support.

Thackeray published many of his early magazine and newspaper pieces under the pseudonym Michael Angelo Titmarsh, or sometimes simply M.A.Titmarsh. He was a regular contributor for Punch from 1842 to 1854. His contributions included both written material as well as drawings and sketches.

Interestingly, the first book-length publication of Thackeray’s writing was produced in the United States. In 1838, two Philadelphia publishers, Carey and Hart, published a collection of Thackeray’s pieces from Fraser’s Magazine under the title of The Yellowplush Correspondence . Other volumes soon followed, including his masterpiece, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, which began appearing serially in 1847; The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Respectable Family, which ran from 1853 to 1855, and The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century, whose twenty-four numbers ran from 1857 to 1859.

Hoping to earn enough money to support his two daughters and his wife in the event of his death, Thackeray made an extensive lecture tour of Europe and the east coast of the United States between 1851 and 1853. The tour proved successful on two accounts: it earned him both financial stability as well as an increased readership.

After an unsuccessful run for a seat in Parliament in 1857, Thackeray turned again to magazine writing and became the editor of the popular Cornhill Magazine . Among its contributors were Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Washington Irving, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and Wilkie Collins. Despite the magazine’s popularity, he resigned as editor in the spring of 1862 to concentrate on his own writing.

Thackeray died in his sleep on Christmas Eve, 1863. He was fifty-two years old.

Though best known as the daughter of one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian Era, Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie was a successful writer in her own right. Born on June 9, 1837 to William Makepeace Thackeray and Isabella Getkin Creach Shawe (1816–1893), Ritchie was the first of three daughters. Following the death of the youngest daughter Jane, Anne’s mother lapsed into a state of mental illness from which she never recovered. With her mother in and out of various sanitoriums, Ritchie was left in the care of her father who gave her the kind of liberal education usually reserved for boys.

Ritchie is the author of eight novels, including The Story of Elizabeth (1863), The Village on the Cliff (1867), Old Kensington (1873), Miss Angel (1875), Miss Williamson’s Divagations (1881), and Mrs. Dymond (1885). She is perhaps best known, however, for her criticism and memorials of the leading literary figures of her day, including personal memorials of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Edward Ruskin. She is also the author of A Discourse of Modern Sibyls (1913) in which she wrote about her literary predecessors including George Eliot, Currer Bell, and Margaret Oliphant. Her essay, Charles Dickens as I remember Him, is one of her most popular and was eventually published in her 1913 collection, From the Porch .

During her lifetime, Ritchie had the privilege of befriending many of England’s most prolific and respected writers. She grew up among her father’s friends, including the Carlyles, the Brownings, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Barry Cornwall, and Edward FitzGerald. As an older woman, she witnessed the success of her niece by marriage, Virginia Woolf, and became something of a matriarchal figure for a new generation of writers, including Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Daughter of William Thackeray.

English author, memoirist, and essayist.