Richard Ponsonby-Fane

Richard Arthur Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane (8 January 1878 – 10 December 1937) was a British academic, author, and Japanologist.

Richard Arthur Brabazon Ponsonby was born at Gravesend on the south bank of the Thames in Kent, England. His boyhood was spent in the family home in London and at his grandfather's Somerset country home, Brympton d'Evercy which he inherited after the deaths of both his grandfather and father. He added "Fane" to his name when Brympton devolved to him in 1916.

Ponsonby was educated at Harrow School.

In 1896, Ponsonby traveled to Cape Town to serve as Private Secretary to the Governor of the British Cape Colony. For the next two decades, his career in the British Empire's colonial governments spanned the globe. He worked closely with a number of colonial leaders as private secretary to the Governor of Natal (1896), to the Governor of Trinidad and Tobago (1898), to the Governor of Ceylon (1900), and to the Governor of Hong Kong (1903). He was re-posted to Natal in 1907; and in 1910, he was private secretary to the Governor of Fiji. Also in 1910 he played a single first-class cricket match for the Marylebone Cricket Club. In 1915-1919, he was re-posted as private secretary to the Governor of Hong Kong.

In addition to his government duties in Hong Kong, he began lecturing at the University of Hong Kong in 1916; and his association with the faculty of the university continued until 1926.

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