Penelope Ruth Mortimer was a Welsh-born English journalist, biographer, and novelist. Her semi-autobiographical novel The Pumpkin Eater (1962) was made into a 1964 film of the same name.

The Pumpkin Eater is a 1964 British drama film starring Anne Bancroft as an unusually fertile woman and Peter Finch as her philandering husband. The film was adapted by Harold Pinter from the 1962 novel of the same title by Penelope Mortimer and was directed by Jack Clayton. The title is a reference to the nursery rhyme "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater".