Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ruth Pitter
-
Standard Name: Pitter, Ruth
Birth Name: Ruth Pitter
During a career that spanned the greater part of the twentieth century, RP
published eighteen collections of poetry. She left letters and a journal, and occasionally spoke or wrote on literary topics. Her admirers have seen her work as offering an alternative to experimental modernism. She has four poems in the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse edited by Philip Larkin
in 1973.
One of those who helped him in a small way financially at his leanest period was the poet Ruth Pitter
.
Friends, Associates
Alison Uttley
Despite the Blyton fiasco, AU
formed friendships with several fellow-writers. She became friends with children's writer Eleanor Farjeon
, whom she met in June 1954; poet Ruth Pitter
, whom she met in spring 1956...
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin
and Kingsley Amis
. Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Leisure and Society
Margaret Kennedy
MK
was a guest at a literary dinner honouring Ruth Pitter
for winning the Hawthornden prize (for A Trophy of Arms), and Margaret Lane
(who had won the Femina Vie Heureuse prize in 1935...
Material Conditions of Writing
Margaret Kennedy
Shortly after the publication of Together and Apart, MK
attended a literary dinner celebrating Ruth Pitter
for her Hawthornden prize. At this dinner, Pitter gave a speech in which (as if reflecting the influence...
Occupation
Viola Meynell
Her first broadcast was, appropriately, on her mother, Alice Meynell
. The BBC director praised her for being the best first-time presenter he had ever seen. She followed up with programmes on Francis Thompson
,...
Occupation
Dorothy Wellesley
At Penns during the Second World WarDW
wrote of her fear—An explosion. I thought of my son. (Oh, don't think!) I thought of Hilda
(she is safe)—but also of solitude, of her...
Dowson, Jane, editor. Women’s Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology. Routledge.
122
Janet Montefiore
regrets the absence of EJS
from Robin Skelton
's anthology New Verse, 1964, while acknowledging that it would be unfair to blame Skelton...
Reception
Frances Cornford
In this honour she followed Ruth Pitter
(the first woman to be awarded the Queen's gold medal) and preceded Stevie Smith
.
GO
began writing during his down-and-out period after his return from British imperial Asia. The poet Ruth Pitter
, who read some of his early work in draft, later recalled that we cruel girls...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jennings
In 1990 she supplied the introduction for the Enitharmon Press
edition of the Collected Poems of Ruth Pitter
(who was to die two years later).
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Timeline
1907: Alfred Richard Orage and Holbrook Jackson...
