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© 2015 University of Chicago Library
The collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Monroe, Harriet. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray 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
These letters illustrate the manifold interests and activities that absorbed Harriet Monroe outside of her central career as editor of Poetry. They shed light on her as a playwright and a poet, art-critic for the Chicago Tribune, conservationist (especially interested in the Hetch-Hetchy Valley), energetic worker for peace and civic improvement, and the recipient of many honors and awards.
Subseries 1, Personal Correspondence includes letters from many distinguished correspondents in these various fields, most notably Jane Addams, Daniel French, Herbert Adams, Carter Harrison, Maude Elliott, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Eugene Field, E.C. Stedman, Louis Sullivan, Rebecca West, William Allen White, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Charles Zueblin, and William Vaughn Moody. The file of Robert Louis Stevenson's correspondence to Monroe also includes her manuscript about Stevenson and other related material.
Some interesting letters to Harriet Monroe from her sister Lucy Calhoun and her brother-in-law William J. Calhoun are included here, written in 1912 when the latter was serving as United States Minister to China at Peking, at the time of the launching of the Chinese Republic.
Subseries 2 contains Harriet Monroe's personal letters to family and friends written by her between 1873 and 1936, as well as other outgoing correspondence. Notable among them are the following-
1873, Monroe wrote 2 letters to "a beloved friend, Mattie" when she was twelve years old, the earliest letters in the collection.
1877-1879, A series of 10 letters to family and friends from the convent at Georgetown where she attended school.
1888-1889, Written from New York to her family in Chicago. Describe visits with the poet E. C. Stedman. Include the 30-page letter of June 3, 1888 describing her interview with Robert Louis Stevenson.
1897-1898, First travel letters from Europe where Monroe went after winning her famous suit against the New York World.
1899, A description of a party given in the "Little Room" in the Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
1910, More travel letters, written on Monroe's trip around the world, from Moscow, Siberia, etc. Upon return from this tour her "birth of an idea"-to found a poetry magazine-occurred.
1923, Travel letters, this time recording her meetings with poets abroad. "The first poet I met was Harold Monro."
1936, Last travel letters from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires to Morton Zabel and Geraldine Udell who were carrying on the magazine in Monroe's absence. One of these letters was received after notice of her death had been cabled.
The Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1925 and in that first year Monroe wrote to Henry Allen Moe giving her opinion of Sharmel Iris, one of the applicants for the scholarship. After this Monroe corresponded regularly with Moe until 1936. In 1932 she joined the Advisory Committee of the Foundation for a four-year term. Her letters contain suggestions of poets whom she thought worthy of awards, endorsements of candidates under consideration, and strong remonstrances for what she considered the neglect of creative artists, especially poets of the Midwest.
Over 80 carbon copies of Monroe's letters to other editors are included in her correspondence with other editor-publishers (folders 8-12) which throw light on Monroe's relationship with them and her opinions as an editor. Two letters here are especially valuable historically; the letter from Ferris Greenslea (Houghton Mifflin) dated March 8, 1910 in which he comments on "the present state of public inattention to anything in verse form," which was the state of affairs that fired her determination to start a magazine for poets, and the letter from Edward J. O'Brien of the Four Seas Company, Boston, dated September 20, 1912, announcing his forthcoming magazine to be called Poetry. This alarmed Monroe into advancing the date of her first issue of Poetry, which had already been announced and which she feared was to be forestalled by the rival Boston publication.
Series II includes diaries documenting Monroe's daily life and travels around the world. The earliest starts with the events of the 1881 Christmas season and covers the year 1882 and includes descriptions of dances, parties, the toilettes of her friends and the men with whom she danced the "German." On Monday June 19th she records "My first appearance in print!" Special attention is given to Oscar Wilde, who was giving lectures in Chicago in February and March and to a description of Edwin Booth's Hamlet, and her own idea of how Hamlet should be played. A later diary notes the fate of the men convicted in the Haymarket Affair. November 11, 1887, 11:30 AM - "At this hour Spies, Parsons, Engel and Fischer, four of the seven anarchists, are dying or preparing to die." Monroe's Guestbook for 1919-1921 was kept in the office of Poetry and contains remarks by visitors including Amy Lowell, Eunice Tietjens, Edgar Lee Masters, and Carl Sandburg
The photographs are a heterogeneous collection of people and places arranged alphabetically. Many pictures of the Monroe clan; Mitchells, Monroes, Fetchers, and Roots; pictures of the actress Mary Anderson, and of Sarah Cowell LeMoyne who read a portion of The Columbian Ode by Monroe at the dedication ceremonies of the World's Columbian Exposition; thirteen pictures of buildings and views of the Exposition; a photograph of the actor Henry Irving (see note on Irving in 1882 diary-Box 4 folder 2). Pictures labeled by Monroe as Deerfield Minuet pictures are dated 1892 (taken of a dance to inaugurate the restoration of the old ballroom in the inn at Deerfield, Mass.) show Monroe as one of the dancers
Of biographical importance for studies of Harriet Monroe and significant for research into the history of Poetry are these business papers. Of special interest; an early statement in a letter, typed, not signed, from Monroe to her executors dated April 21, 1923 concerning her property as editor of Poetry "consisting of mss., letters, photographs, books (often autographed)"; "You may feel that it should be presented intact-to either Newberry Library, the Chicago Public Library, or the Chicago Historical Society"; a copy of the receipt of the University of Chicago on the bequest Monroe was making in its favor, giving the University's agreement "to keep and maintain said poetry library," dated April 23, 1931; letters received as tributes to Monroe after her death from H.L. Davis, Elizabeth Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, et al.; letters concerning the erection of the bronze plaque in Arequipa to mark Monroe's grave; letters from Mrs. Allen Simple describing Monroe's last days.
A letter (ALS) dated August 18, 1936 from Monroe to her brother, William S. Monroe, written from the S.S. Southern Cross states; "...autobiography unfinished, Geraldine Udell is the only one who knows where it is and its condition, and who could consult with Mr. Latham of the Macmillan Co. and put the finished part in order for publication....For this difficult job Geraldine is to be liberally paid, either outright from my estate or by a good share of the royalties from the book."
In carrying out this job Udell had to obtain permission from the poets for direct quotations Monroe makes in the book. She wrote to the poets-her carbons are included in this box-and most of the poets agreed briefly and warmly to allow the quotations. Included are letters from Richard Aldington, Witter Bynner, Robert Frost, and Louis Untermeyer. Only Ezra Pound made an issue of this request, demanding certain specific arrangements-he wanted a black line or border down the page!-but he ultimately granted permission. His letters, and his comments and notations on the typed copy of the material Monroe had written containing quotations from his letters, form an interesting small body of material.
The correspondence about the first edition of The New Poetry, the anthology edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, contains the letters Monroe exchanged with the editors of Macmillan's. Henderson fell ill of tuberculosis at the outset of plans for the anthology so that the full burden of the correspondence, the selection of poems and writing for permission to publish, in fact all of the editorial work of getting out the book, fell upon Monroe.
In a letter of August 18, 1916, the editor Edward Marsh commented; "I feel sure that you will be criticized for a principle of selection that omits Alfred Noyes and includes Hardy, Hueffer, Mrs. Meynell and others, or that gives upwards of 20 pages to Pound, Lindsay, and Masters and comparatively brief space to Gibson, Masefield, and MacKaye." Monroe fought for her right as editor to use her own judgment and when Marsh further criticized her for favoritism toward the poets who had appeared in her magazine Monroe replied; "The fact that these poets, except Masters, have appeared mostly in Poetry is a happy accident, highly complimentary to the magazine; but it has not influenced our judgment." (August 7, 1916, to W. B. Henderson of Macmillan's) Monroe maintained that what she was doing as editor of the anthology was "to stress the poets whom we consider important in the new movement, and give a much smaller space to those who, however excellent belong rather to a more conservative group."
Included in this section are letters from publishers and poets either declining or granting permission to publish their works.