author
Robert Welles Ritchie
1879–1942
A journalist turned novelist and screenwriter, he wrote brisk adventure and western fiction that moved easily from magazines to books and early film. His career stretched from newspaper work in San Francisco and Yokohama to popular storytelling for a wide American audience.
2 Audiobooks
Inside the Lines
by Earl Derr Biggers, Robert Welles Ritchie
Dust of the Desert
by Robert Welles Ritchie
About the author
Born in Quincy, Illinois, in 1879, Robert Welles Ritchie built an unusually varied writing career. Reliable records identify him as an American author, journalist, and scenario writer, and his work appeared in magazines as well as in novels and motion pictures.
Early in his career he worked as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, later edited the Japan Advertiser in Yokohama, and went on to write for New York papers. That background helps explain the pace and color of his fiction, which often leans toward adventure, western, and desert settings. His known books include Inside the Lines (with Earl Derr Biggers), Trails to Two Moons, Dust of the Desert, and Drums of Doom.
Ritchie also wrote for silent-era films, showing how comfortably he moved between print and screen storytelling. He died in Carmel, California, in 1942, leaving behind the kind of energetic popular fiction that still feels at home in an audiobook library.