English teacher at London school leaves £250,000 library of rare books

 
P3 Teacher Bruce Ritchie / books
14 May 2013

A former English teacher at a London school left a £250,000 collection of rare books, including a first edition of The Great Gatsby and a signed Dickens novel, when he died.

Bruce Ritchie taught English at Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood, Middlesex, for 29 years. Experts said they were surprised that he had amassed such an impressive collection on a teacher’s salary.

His collection of more than a thousand books includes a manuscript of a Tom Stoppard play, The Real Thing, on which the author wrote: “To Bruce Ritchie, defender of Eng sodding lit.”

There are first editions of works by Henry Fielding and Alexander Pope, and a signed copy of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

A first edition of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has six textual misprints that were corrected in later versions. It is estimated the collection will fetch up to a quarter of a million pounds at auction.

Mr Ritchie, who died last year, specified in his will that his library should be dispersed at a sale so other collectors could experience the thrill that he derived from buying books.

He taught at Merchant Taylors’, an independent school for boys, from 1966 to 1995, and moved to Scotland after he retired.

Michael Illing, a maths teacher at the school, told the Times Educational Supplement that Mr Ritchie’s colleagues knew he bought rare books but had no idea of the scale or quality of his collection.

“He would be prepared to say that, yes, he’d been at an auction the previous week, or that he was going to one in the weeks to come, but I didn’t know the extent of it,” said Mr Illing.

Cathy Marsden, books specialist at auction house Lyon & Turnbull, said: “The first thing that’s unusual is the sheer quantity of high-quality, modern first editions. The other is that this was all collected on a schoolteacher’s salary. Some of these books are worth thousands of pounds.”

John Sibbald, consultant books specialist at the auction house, added: “Bruce Ritchie was buying from significant book dealers and from auctions up and down the country. He was taking on serious competitions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

“But he didn’t have a wife leaning over his shoulder saying, ‘Our children are going hungry because you’re buying these books.’ He was able to spend his money in this particular way.”

The auction takes place tomorrow at Lloyd & Turnbull in Edinburgh.

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