Collection IAR - Richards, I. A. and D.E.

Ivor Richards was born at Hillside, Sandbach, Cheshire , and was he son of William Armstrong Richards, a chemical engineer originally from Swansea, and his wife, Mary Anne, daughter of William Haigh, a Yorkshire wool manufacturer. On his father's death in 1902 Richards moved with his mother and brothers to Bristol, where he attended Clifton College from 1905 to 1911. In 1907 he had an attack of tuberculos which kept him away from school for over a year.

In 1911 he matriculated from Magdalene College with an exhibition to study history. Within a few months he switched to moral sciences and studied ethics, logic, and psychology.

In 1922 he became a College Lecturer in English and Moral Sciences.

In 1926, when a separate English faculty was created as part of a general restructuring of the University's teaching arrangements, he was appointed a University Lecturer. In the same year he was made a Fellow. He immediately took a year's leave and travelled to America, Japan, and China. In Honolulu, on 31 December 1926, he married Dorothy Eleanor (1894–1986). The couple had first met on a climbing holiday in Wales in 1917, and they shared a lifelong passion for mountaineering.

In 1944 he became a Professor at Harvard, but returned to Magdalene in his retirement. He became an Honorary Fellow in 1964.

In 1979 he returned to China again for a lecture tour, but was taken seriously ill there and had to be flown back to England. He died in Cambridge on 7 September 1979.

He was a founding father of the English Faculty and originator of ‘practical criticism’. He was a brilliant literary critic and linguistic philosopher, a very good poet, a distinguished mountaineer, a tireless promoter of ‘Basic’ English (on which he collaborated with C. K. Ogden, a Magdalene man slightly his senior), and something of an intellectual guru in the USA.

Commemorative tablet at Wentworth House.

Further reading:
College Magazine, No. 23 (1978-79) pp. 1-7 (Sir William Empson, W. Hamilton)
Book Review, College Magazine, No. 34 (1989-90) pp. 60-63 (R. Luckett and J. E. Stevens)

Born in Camberwell, London, daughter of John James Pilley, science lecturer, and his wife, Annie Maria Young.

Her first exposure climbing was on a family holiday in north Wales, but her parents were not dedicated climbers and felt the activity was dangerous.

She was introduced to rock climbing by Herbert Carr in 1915 and climbed in Wales with mostly male companions. She also climbed in the Lake District and joined the Fell and Rock Climbing Club in 1918. She was quickly elected a committee member, and in 1920 was a founder of its London section. The club was unusual being mixed, and her membership brought her closer to other innovative female climbers.

She climbed in the French Alps and qualified for membership of the Ladies' Alpine Club. During her second season in 1921 she made guideless ascents of the Egginergrat and the Portjengrat with two other female climbers. It was very unusual for women to lead an alpine climb, let alone do so as part of an all-female party. She was also involved with the founding movement of the Pinnacle Club in 1921 which was predominantly a rock climbing club and exclusively for women, it was dedicated to nurturing the skills of female climbers.

Throughout the 1920s she climbed extensively in Britain and Europe. During a two-year world tour, 1925–7, she climbed in the Canadian Rockies, the Selkirks, the Bugaboo, and the American Rockies. In 1926 first ascents of Mount Baker and Mount Shuksau, Washington, were made with Ivor Richards who she married on 31 December that year in Honolulu.
The high point of her climbing career came in 1928, when she made the celebrated first ascent of the north ridge of the Dent Blanche, with her husband, the guide Joseph Georges, and Antoine Georges. This was acknowledged as one of the last great alpine climbing problems.

She wrote Climbing Days (1935; 2nd edn, 1965) which is a comprehensive account of her climbing exploits.

After her marriage she continued climbing inclucing in China, Japan, Korea, Burma and America.

Following a car accident in 1958 the scale of her climbing was reduced but she continued to endorse mountain activity through support of the clubs she had joined in her youth and in 1975 was appointed the first vice-president of the Alpine Club (the amalgamated Ladies' Alpine Club and all-male Alpine Club).

Her achievements all over the world marked her as one of the most outstanding mountaineers of the inter-war and post-war periods. One of mountaineering’s most irrepressible personalities, she spent her last new year, aged ninety-one, at the climbers' hut at Glen Brittle, Skye, drinking whisky and talking mountains with a party of Scottish climbers. She died in Cambridge, on 24 September 1986.

At Magdalene
Although born Dorothy she was known at Magdalene as Dorothea. She was the first woman to have High Table dining privileges (from 1979).
She was a major benefactor to leaving the College her entire estate of £1.3 million which puts her alongside the major benefactors - the Founder of the College, Peter Peckard (Master, 1781-1997) and A. C. Benson (Master, 1915-1925). She also left to the College a remarkable diary, running from 1912 to 1986.

Obituary: College Magazine No. 31 (1986-87) pp. iv (two photographs) and p. 16