W. Pett (William Pett) Ridge

Born in Chartham, Kent, on April 22, 1859, he was educated at Marden and at the Birkbeck Institute in London. Before establishing himself as a writer, he worked as a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, and he began publishing humorous sketches in newspapers in the early 1890s.

He built his reputation through fiction that drew lively, often affectionate portraits of London life. Readers and reference works especially note his skill in writing about Cockney and working-class characters with humor and sympathy, and Mord Em'ly (1898) is often singled out as an early breakthrough.

Ridge continued publishing novels and stories for decades and died on October 2, 1930. Though less widely known today than some of his contemporaries, he remains an appealing chronicler of ordinary people, everyday speech, and the comic side of urban life.