Dorothy Pilley Richards (16 September 1894 – 24 September 1986) was a prominent
mountaineer
Mountaineering, mountain climbing, or alpinism is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become sports ...
. She attended
Queenwood Ladies' College and went on a climbing tour with fellow student
Bryher in Wales and around this time joined the
Fell & Rock Climbing Club, later helping found the
Pinnacle Club in 1921.
In the 1920s, she climbed extensively in the
Alps
The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.
...
, Britain, and North America after her marriage to educator,
literary critic
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
and
rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
ian,
I.A. Richards.
In 1928, she made the celebrated first ascent of the north north west ridge of the
Dent Blanche in the Swiss Alps, with Joseph Georges, Antoine Georges and her husband,
which she described in her well-regarded memoir, ''Climbing Days'' (1935)
– republished by Canongate Books in 2024.
Pilley's great-great-nephew Dan Richards has written a biography of her, published by
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...
in 2016 and also titled ''Climbing Days''.
References
Sources
*
Further reading
*
*
Gallery
File:Dorothy Pilley, c. 1926.jpg, Dorothy Pilley c.1926
File:Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards - 1920s.jpg, Dorothy Pilley & I.A. Richards - passport photographs 1920s
File:90 Ivor, Joseph and Dorothy - Bertol 1928 copy 2.jpg, I.A. Richards, Joseph Georges and Dorothy Pilley - Bertol, Switzerland, 1928 (Antoine Georges)
File:Climbing Days - 2024 Canongate edition.jpg, Canongate 'Canon' reissue of Dorothy Pilley's Climbing Days, 2024
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richards, Dorothy Pilley
English mountain climbers
1894 births
1986 deaths
British female climbers
People from Camberwell
People educated at Queenwood Ladies' College