Marie Elizabeth Pitt

Marie Pitt, like her partner Bernard Patrick O’Dowd, was a radical writer of the Federation period. She had been born Marie Elizabeth Josephine McKeown in Bulumwaal, Victoria. She had married young and had four children with gold miner William Henry Pitt. After Pitt died she made a living writing for newspapers and clerical work. She purchased a house in Northcote and moved in with fellow poet Bernard O’Dowd. Her poems were often published in the Bulletin and in 1944 she won the Australian Broadcasting Commission national song lyric contest, which brought her national prominence. Pitt died in 1948 and is buried at the Fawkner Cemetery.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1851 – 1890. (1981). Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press.

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