Pitter was born in Ilford. Her birth certificate reports her given name simply as "Ruth." She was employed at the War Office from 1915 to 1917, later working as a painter at a furniture company in Suffolk, Walberswick Peasant Pottery Co., where she remained until 1930. In Suffolk, she befriended Richard and Ida Blair at Southwold, the parents of George Orwell, and later helped Orwell find lodgings in London in 1927, taking a vague interest in his writing, of which she was generally critical. Later, Pitter and her lifelong good friend, Kathleen O'Hara, operated Deane and Forester, a small firm that specialised in decorative, painted furniture. The business closed when World War II began. Pitter took work in a factory. After the war, she and O'Hara opened a small business painting trays. Pitter was skilful at the flower-painting used in both furniture and tray decorating. From 1946 to 1972, she was often a guest on BBC radio programmes, and from 1956 to 1960 she appeared regularly on the BBC's The Brains Trust, one of the first television talk programmes.
Poet
Pitter began writing poetry early in life under the influence of her parents, George and Louisa Pitter, both primary schoolteachers. In 1920, she published her first book of poetry with the help of Hilaire Belloc. Despite her business and factory work, Pitter managed to spend a few hours a day writing poetry. She went on to publish 18 volumes of new and collected verse over a 70-year career as a published poet. Many of her volumes met with some critical and financial success. She received the Hawthornden Prize in 1937 for A Trophy of Arms, published the previous year. In 1954 she won the William E. Heinemann Award for her book The Ermine.
Style and influences
Pitter was a traditionalist poet—she avoided most of the experimentations of modern verse and preferred the meter and rhyme schemes of the 19th century. One critic has described her and her poetry thus: Because of this, Pitter was frequently overlooked by critics of her day, and has only in recent years been seen as important: her reputation was helped by Larkin's respect for her poetry. She was a good friend of C. S. Lewis, who admired her poetry and once said, according to his friend and biographer George Sayer, that if he was the kind of man who got married, he would have wanted to marry Ruth Pitter. In correspondence between the two, Lewis often critiqued her work and made suggestions. More often he invited her critique of his poems. Pitter is considered by many Lewis scholars to have had an effect on his writing in the 1940s and 1950s. W. B. Yeats, Robin Skelton and Thom Gunn also appreciated Pitter's work and praised her poetry. Lord David Cecil once remarked that Pitter was one of the most original and moving poets then living. Pitter's work continues to be published in anthologies, including:
More Poetry Please! 100 Popular Poems from the BBC Radio 4 Programme, where her "The Rude Potato" appears.
The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, ed. John Dixon Hunt, where her "The Diehards" and "Other People's Glasshouses" appear.
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, 2nd edition, eds. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, where her "The Military Harpist," "The Irish Patriarch," "Old Nelly's Birthday," and "Yorkshire Wife's Saga" appear.
The New Penguin Book of English Verse, ed. Paul Keegan, where her "But for Lust" appears.
