Old Kensington

Anne Thackeray Ritchie

Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, was an English writer, whose several novels were appreciated in their time and made her a central figure on the late Victorian literary scene. She is noted especially as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for short fiction that places fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu. Her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond introduced into English the proverb, "If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn."