In 1955 Ruth Pitter became the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Queen Elizabeth broke precedent and presented the award in person. Though it is her most cherished, this award was not the first for Pitter. In 1937, A Trophy of Arms received the coveted Hawthornden Prize, and in 1954, Pitter was recipient of the William E. Heinemann Award for The Ermine. More recently, in 1979, Pitter was made a Commander of the British Empire. Not known widely but deeply appreciated by a few, Pitter is a poet of classical discipline writing in traditional forms but speaking in a modern voice and with mystical conviction. One only begins to identify her by saying that her work is religious though attached to no creed; that her love poems match Edna St. Vincent Millay's; that her nature lyrics compete with Robert Frost's; that her symbolic poems are equal to Stephen...