Robert Gittings - Career

Career

In 1933, Gittings was elected a research fellow of Jesus College and became a history supervisor in 1938.

In 1940. he took a job with BBC Radio as a producer and writer, remaining with the Corporation twenty-three years. He made broadcasts for schools, dramatizations of history and literary programmes, and contributed to radio programmes such as Poets and Poetry, World History Series, Poetry Now, and The World of Books.

He continued to write verse, and his first major book, Wentworth Place (1950), was well reviewed. History and poetry combined in him into the ability to bring the past to life. In all, he published twelve volumes of poetry.

In 1954, his biography John Keats: the Living Year was published, to be followed in 1956 by The Mask of Keats, and in 1960 by Shakespeare's Rival. He left the BBC in 1964. His John Keats (1969) was awarded the WH Smith Literary Award, and he also wrote scholarly studies of Thomas Hardy: The Young Thomas Hardy (1975), The Older Hardy (1978, awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and (with his wife, Jo Manton) The Second Mrs Hardy (1979).

As a playwright, Gittings naturally specialized in radio drama, but he also wrote plays for Women's Institutes, This Tower my Prison (1961) and Conflict at Canterbury (1970) for the Canterbury Festival. Introducing Thomas Hardy, a double act with Frances Horowitz, was performed from 1971 until 1978, when Horowitz died.

With Jo Manton, he wrote Dorothy Wordsworth (1985) and the same year published his last book of verse, People, Places, Personal. His last book, Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys, was printed a few days before his death.