Monroe, Harriet

Monroe, Harriet, 1860–1936, American editor, critic, and poet, b. Chicago. In 1912 she founded Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, which paid and encouraged both established and new poets. Monroe's literary reputation is based on her editorship of this important magazine. She introduced to readers such writers as Carl Sandburg, Rabindranath Tagore, Vachel Lindsay, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Frost. Her own works include several volumes of poetry; her essays Poets and Their Art (1933); the anthology she compiled with Alice Corbin Henderson, The New Poetry (1917); and her autobiography, A Poet's Life (1938).

Bibliography

See study by D. J. Cahill (1974).

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Monroe, Harriet

(born Dec. 23, 1860, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Sept. 26, 1936, Arequipa, Peru) U.S. editor. She worked on various newspapers in the city as an art and drama critic while privately writing verse and verse plays. In 1912 she founded Poetry magazine, securing the backing of wealthy patrons and inviting contributions from a wide range of poets. Monroe's open-minded editorial policy and awareness of the importance of the Modernist revolution in contemporary poetry made her a major influence in its development.

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Monroe, Harriet (1861–1936) editor, poet; born in Chicago. In 1912 she founded Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, the first modern American "little magazine," editing it until 1936 and publishing virtually every American poet of the times. Her own poetry was collected in Valeria and Other Poems (1892).