Up for auction "English Author" William Pett Ridge Hand Written Letter.

ES-2837

William

Pett Ridge (1859–1930), English author, was

born at Chartham,

near Canterbury,

Kent, on 22 April 1859, and was educated at Marden, Kent, and at the Birkbeck Institute,

London. He was for some time a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, and began

about 1891 to write humorous sketches for the St James's Gazette and other papers. He

published first novel was A Clever Wife (1895), but he secured his first

striking success with his fifth, Mord Em'ly (1898), an excellent example

of his ability to draw humorous portraits of lower class life. Pett Ridge was a

compassionate man, giving generously of both his time and money to charity. He

founded the Babies Home at Hoxton in 1907 and was an ardent supporter of many

organisations that had the welfare of children as their object. This charitable

zeal, and the fact that he established himself as the leading novelist of

London life and character, led to him being characterised as the natural

successor of Dickens. All his friends considered Pett Ridge

to be one of life's natural bachelors. They were rather surprised therefore in

1909 when he married Olga Hentschel. Four of his books, including Mord Em'ly,

were adapted as films in the early 1920s, all with scripts by Eliot

Stannard.Pett Ridge's great popularity as a novelist in the early

part of the century declined in the latter years of his life. His work was

considered to be rather old fashioned, though he still wrote and had published

at least one book in each year in the final decade of his life. His last work, Led

by Westmacott, was published in the year after his death. William Pett

Ridge died, aged 71, at his home, Ampthill, Willow Grove, Chislehurst, on 29

September 1930 and was cremated at West Norwood on 2 October 1930. His ashes

were taken away by his surviving family, his wife, a son and a daughter.