Cinderella

by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919) was an English writer. She was the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. She spent her childhood in France and, in 1863, published The Story of Elizabeth with immediate success. Several works followed including: To Esther and Other Sketches (1869), The Village on the Cliff, Old Kensington, Tailors and Spinsters and Other Essays, Bluebeard's Keys and Other Stories and Five Old Friends. In other works, she peculiarly used old folk stories to depict modern situations and occurrences, such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding-Hood. She also published the following novels: Miss Angel (1875), Miss Williamson's Divagations (1881), A Book of Sibyls: Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Opie, Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen (1883), Mrs. Dymond (1885), and the biography Madame de Sevigne (1881).

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2010

About the author

Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, née Thackeray, was an English writer. She was the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. She was the author of several novels which were highly regarded in their time, and a central figure in the late Victorian literary scene. She is perhaps best remembered today as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for her short fiction placing traditional fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu.

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 (1840–1875), who married Leslie Stephen in 1869. Anne, whose father called her "Anny", spent her childhood in France and England.

She married her cousin Richmond Ritchie, seventeen years her junior, in 1877. The couple had two children, Hester and Billy.

She was the step-aunt of Virginia Woolf who penned an obituary for her in the Times Literary Supplement. She is believed to be the inspiration for the character of Mrs. Hilbery in Woolf's Night and Day.