Monroe, Harriet. Papers, 1873-1944

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Chicago and Illinois

Literature and Poetry

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When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Monroe, Harriet. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Harriett Monroe (23 Dec. 1860-26 Sept. 1936), poet and editor, was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Henry Stanton Monroe, a lawyer, and Martha Mitchell, who had come to Chicago in the early 1850s.

As a child, Harriet was influenced by Henry Monroe’s literary and artistic interests, and, as she recounted in her posthumously published autobiography, “started in early with Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, with Dickens and Thackeray,” drawn from her father’s “book-lined library.” In 1876, she was sent to Visitation Convent in Washington, D.C., where she continued her literary studies, and graduated in 1879.

Monroe lived in her family home until 1903, and in Chicago throughout her life, but traveled widely in the United States and abroad. She became an active freelance writer and arts reviewer for newspapers in Chicago and New York, and developed a social and intellectual circle that included Chicagoans such as writer Eugene Field, literary editor Margaret Sullivan, and architect John Wellborn Root, who was married to her sister Dora. She traveled regularly to New York, often in the company of her sister Lucy, an editor at publisher Stone & Kimball, and became acquainted with the literary salons of that city hosted by Richard Watson Gilder, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and others. Monroe also carried on a long correspondence with Robert Louis Stevenson.

Monroe’s own modest literary career took hold in 1888, when her first published poem, “With Shelley’s Poems,” appeared in Century Magazine, and she was commissioned to write a dedicatory poem for Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Auditorium. In 1891, she was invited to write an ode that was read aloud by actress Sarah C. LeMoyne during the October 21, 1892 opening ceremonies of the World’s Columbian Exhibition. The Columbian Ode was well-received, but was later printed without permission by the New York World. Following a lawsuit, Monroe was awarded $5,000 in damages. With the payment and income from writing and teaching, she was able to fund continued travels in Europe and the western United States. In 1910, she again visited Europe and traveled through Russia as part of a larger voyage to visit her sister Lucy, now married to William J. Calhoun, U.S. Special Envoy to China.

In 1911, Monroe embarked upon her most prominent literary venture, when she began to raise subscription funds from wealthy Chicago patrons for the publication of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which debuted in September, 1912. Taking Whitman's line, "To have great poets there must be great audiences too" as her motto, Monroe sought to cultivate a wide readership for new writing and ideas. By insisting on paying all contributors and establishing an annual prize, Poetry magazine raised the visibility and status of poetry. The journal published and promoted the careers of a galaxy of poets who came to define twentieth century modernism, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes, among many others. Poetry transformed the way that poetry and poets are recognized and read worldwide, and it continues to flourish as a major cultural influence.

Monroe served as Poetry’s editor for twenty-four years, from its founding until her death, dedicating her efforts to both its continued literary innovation and financial stability. She continued to travel, visiting Europe, Mexico, China, and South America. In August 1936, she suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage while traveling in Peru, after attending a meeting of the International Association of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists (PEN) in Buenos Aires. Monroe was buried in Arequipa, Peru.

In 1931, Harriet Monroe presented her poetry library, her personal papers, and the editorial files of Poetry magazine to the University of Chicago. The personal papers have no direct relationship to her career as an editor but relate to her own literary interests, her family, and her friends. Nevertheless her deep involvement with Poetry is reflected in her personal correspondence and diaries.

The Harriet Monroe Papers comprise seventeen linear feet of literary and family correspondence, diaries and memorabilia, and manuscripts of Monroe’s writings, including poems, her autobiography, A Poet’s Life, lectures, essays, and the anthology, The New Poetry. The material is organized into eight series.

Series I: CORRESPONDENCE

Series II: DIARIES, PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORABILIA

Series III: HARRIET MONROE'S ESTATE

Series IV: A POET'S LIFE

Series V: WRITINGS

Series VI: THE NEW POETRY

Series VII: CLIPPINGS

Series VIII: OVERSIZE

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Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Records

• Names
  • Adams, Herbert Baxter, 1850-1901
  • Addams, Jane, 1860-1935
  • Calhoun, Lucy
  • Calhoun, William J.
  • Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 1865-1932
  • French, Daniel Chester, 1850-1931
  • Harrison, Carter Henry, 1860-
  • Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950
  • Monroe, Harriet, 1860-1936
  • Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 1833-1908
  • Sullivan, Louis H., 1856-1924
  • West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892-
  • White, William Allen, 1868-1944
  • Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith, 1856-1923
  • Moody, William Vaughn, 1869-1910
• Subject
  • Women editors -- United States
  • Women poets, American
  • Poets, American
  • Photographs