A Clever Wife

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.