Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)

Old Kensington (1873) was written by "Miss Thackeray", the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Her given name was Anne; a couple of years later she married Richmond Ritchie, subsequently Sir Richmond, so today she is usually referred to as Anne Thackeray Ritchie or Lady Ritchie. I'm amazed that this very good novel has been mostly ignored for the last 100 years. A few scholarly articles have discussed it, and a British publisher reprinted it with another Anne Thackeray novel in the 1990s, but that's it. She does get rather Victorian in places--it's lengthy and full of the narrator's comments. I enjoy Victorian novels, but they do require patience. Nonetheless I loved this story of how Dolly Vanborough found the courage to follow her own course in the wake of grief. Thackeray's prose is lovely: her descriptions of natural settings are rich and exquisite. Moreover, the novel is a commentary on the place of traditional England in the face of advancing empire. I will be reading more Anne Thackeray.… (mehr)