Name Dorothy Richards | Died September 24, 1986 | |
 | ||
Dorothy Pilley Richards (16 September 1894 in Camberwell, London – 24 September 1986 in Cambridge) was a prominent female mountaineer. She began climbing in Wales and joined the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, later helping found The Pinnacle Club in 1921.
In the 1920s, she climbed extensively in the Alps, Britain, and North America after her marriage to educator, literary critic, and rhetorician Ivor Armstrong Richards.
In 1928, she made the celebrated first ascent of the north ridge of the Dent Blanche, with Joseph Georges, Antoine Georges and her husband, which she described in her well-regarded memoir, Climbing Days (1935).
Pilley’s great-great-nephew Dan Richards has written a biography of her life, published Faber in 2016 and also called Climbing Days.