Harry "Ward" Ritchie was born on June 15th, 1905 in Los Angeles, California. He grew up in a series of households in Los Angeles and Pasadena while he attended Marengo Avenue School and South Pasadena High School. In these schools, Ritchie found an early passion for art and literature, and also met lifelong friend and collaborator, Lawrence Clark Powell. Ritchie graduated from Occidental College in 1928 after a brief stint at Sewanee College. He decided to pursue law at the University of Southern California, but quickly realized it was not for him. Inspired by the journals of English printer Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson, Ritchie turned his interests towards printing. He took on a job at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena and enrolled in a vocational printing course at Frank Wiggins Trade School (now Los Angeles Trade Tech). In 1931, Ritchie moved to Paris, France to apprentice under Francois-Louis Schmied, an internationally recognised printer and illustrator. In the same year, Ritchie co-founded The Rounce & Coffin Club with Jake Zeitlin, Grant Dahlstrom, and Gregg Anderson as a rival to the Zamorano Club. This fine-press book and printing club lasted over seventy years, with a peak of fifty-five local members, before coming to an end in 2007.

Ritchie returned to Los Angeles in 1932 to establish his own printing studio, titled the Ward Ritchie Press. By 1945, Ritchie’s client base had grown, pushing him to establish a more commercial branch of his studio with collaborators Gregg Anderson and Joseph Simon. The new branch, titled Anderson, Ritchie, and Simon, took on most of the company’s publishing work, while The Ward Ritchie Press continued to operate on smaller projects. Ritchie served as the president of Anderson, Ritchie, and Simon until 1976. After this role, Ritchie moved to Laguna Beach and decided to focus on hand-pressed printing with his partner Gloria Stuart, calling his new press Laguna Verde Imprenta.

Throughout his career, Ritchie printed thousands of different books, including over 750 which he designed personally. He wrote nearly 100 books, some under pseudonyms like Peter Lum Quince, Betsey Ann Brestol, or Davie Dicker. On January 24th, 1996, Ward Ritchie died in his Los Angeles home at the age of ninety.