Harriet Monroe Biography

Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts. Monroe is best known as the founder and long time editor of Poetry Magazine. She was born in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from the Visitation Academy of Georgetown, D.C., in 1879, and afterward devoted herself to literary work.

Monroe was the first editor at Poetry Magazine when she founded it in 1912. From her position as editor, she played a role in the development of modern poetry, both as an early publisher and as a supporter of poets such as Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams , Carl Sandburg and others.

Additionally, Monroe was a long time correspondent of the poets she supported, and her letters provide a wealth of information on the thoughts and motives of modernist poets. She was also a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County, Illinois.

Monroe was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County, Illinois, and is mentioned in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City.

She was the sister-in-law of the Chicago architect John Wellborn Root.

She died in Arequipa, Peru.