A few years ago an English university library felt unable to make a copy of an early work of Ritchie for me without having hard evidence that the author had died over 70 years ago. The fact that most of Ritchie’s other works, most famously Fabulae Faciles, were out there in the public domain didn’t satisfy their rigorous standards of proof at all.
I searched in vain for the required info but neither libraries nor publishers nor modern editors had a clue.
Then on the Internet I came across an old English newspaper page from 1917 with Ritchie’s obituary.
Fabulae Faciles is not mentioned by name but the article states: “Mr Ritchie was a most successful writer of school books for boys, many of which are used on the Continent, and also very extensively in America”.
The article also mentions Ritchie’s time as a headmaster in a school in Sevenoaks, a town frequently appearing in the prefaces to his books. There can be no doubt that this is the author of Fabulae Faciles.
It would be a shame if this hard-to-find data fell off the radar once again - but I have no idea which authority to pass it on to.
I’m hoping some kind textkitten will come up with an answer or maybe even do the job for me. Ultimately, a line or two in Wikipedia wouldn’t be out of place now there is a valid source to cite.
If anyone has any ideas, let me know. If you’d like to see the full obituary, send me a private message with an email address and I’ll send you a pdf.
(Initially I tried to insert an image of the obituary here but failed miserably. Even with the kind help of jeidsath.)
I’m sorry, but I had to get to my computer to do this (I have been phone-only the last few days). The trick, after uploading to imgur, is to hover your mouse over the image, click the down arrow, click “Get Share Links”, and then click “BBCode (Forums)”. It will provide the link you need.
I’ve also improved the image resolution as much as I was able to.
AND there’s an Illustrated Classics Comic version using the original text, just waiting to be bedwerized - or at least to have its speech balloons filled with Denisoni Latin. But I guess one can’t have everything. μηδὲν ἄγαν … ne quid nimis … spem longam reseces … and all that.
At least I can look forward to receiving my copy of Aladdin In Latin that I ordered from Lulu a day or two ago.
Thank you, Interaxus: you are very generous. However, although I bought into the argument against intellectual property, I think that llustrated Classics Comic is still protected by copyright law, which I intend to respect.
