Claire Pratt

Who was Claire Pratt?

Mildred Claire Pratt was a Canadian artist, poet and editor who published as Claire Pratt. She was the daughter of Viola Whitney and E.J. Pratt, a noted poet and educator. At the age of four Claire contracted polio and subsequently developed osteomyelitis, an inflammatory disease of the bone, which affected her for most of her life.

She graduated in English and Philosophy from Victoria College, University of Toronto and was awarded a gold medal. After studying international relations at Columbia University, and art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art and elsewhere, she worked as an editor for Macmillan Canada, the University of Toronto Press, and Harvard University Press. From 1956-1965 she was senior editor at McClelland & Stewart.

In 1965, ill health forced her to retire but she continued to do freelance work with McClelland and Stewart, Oxford University Press, Press Porcepic, and Consolidated Amethyst. She studied art periodically in Toronto at the Doon School of Art, and in Massachusetts at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

In 1971 she published Silent Ancestors, a genealogical essay subtitled "The Forebears of E.J. Pratt," a tribute to the descendants of the Pratt family who immigrated to Newfoundland from Yorkshire.