Anne Richards

A close friend of Alice James, a cousin of the Sedgwicks, and the daughter of Grace and Anne Ashburner’s brother Samuel Ashburner and his wife, Annie Meade Barstow. She married Francis Gardiner Richards in 1879. For details see “The Letters of Alice James to Anne Ashburner, 1873-78: The Joy of Engagement.”

Moore, Rayburn S., 1920-

The Letters of Alice James to Anne Ashburner, 1873-78: The Joy of Engagement (Part 1)

Resources for American Literary Study - Volume 27, Number 1, 2001, pp. 17-64

Penn State University Press

Rayburn S. Moore - The Letters of Alice James to Anne Ashburner, 1873-78: The Joy of Engagement (Part 1) - Resources for American Literary Study 27:1 Resources for American Literary Study 27.1 (2001) 17-64 The Letters of Alice James to Anne Ashburner, 1873-78: The Joy of Engagement (Part 1) Rayburn S. Moore The University of Georgia Introduction Alice James, the only sister of William and Henry James, was born 7 August 1848 in New York City, was educated at home and abroad by governesses (and less formally by her father), attended school in Newport, and grew up in New York, Europe, Newport, Boston, and Cambridge. In Cambridge, after meeting elsewhere during the summer of 1869, Alice and Anne Ashburner (1846-1909), a neighbor two years her senior, became intimate friends and remained close for the rest of Alice's life. Anne, usually called Annie, Nanny (frequently spelled Nannie), or Nancy, moved semi-permanently with her family to England in 1872, but the two friends corresponded throughout the decade, though the present collection contains nothing written after November 1878. The familiarity of the friendship is attested to on Alice James's part not only by the correspondence, but also by the warm references to Anne Ashburner (Richards after her marriage in 1879) in her diary, by their efforts to see each other after Alice moved to England in 1884 (despite her situation as an invalid), and especially by the fact that Anne Ashburner was one of only...