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Markers of Distinction

Harriet Monroe
1860–1936
Poet and publisher

Harriet Monroe founded Poetry: A Magazine
of Verse in 1912 with the hope of fostering
wide public interest in poetry and increasing
compensation rates for published verse.
Despite a constant struggle to sustain the
magazine, Monroe successfully promoted
a lively forum for innovative poetry and new
poetic movements. As the 20th century drew
to a close, the magazine remained a vital
source of poetic innovation and energy.

Born in Chicago in 1860, Monroe graduated from the academy of Visitation Convent in Washington, D.C., in 1879. In 1892, her long patriotic piece, “Columbian Ode,” was performed by a chorus of thousands at a dedication ceremony for the World’s Columbian Exposition. In succeeding decades, she published several volumes of poetry and worked as an arts critic for various Chicago papers.

Monroe’s legacy lies less in her own writing than in her role as editor and publisher. Though Monroe was a lifelong Chicagoan, her travels and range of contacts brought a cosmopolitan modernism to Poetry, one of several important small-circulation magazines that generated intellectual and cultural ferment in the period before World War I. The magazine was headquartered at 543 Cass Street (now Wabash Avenue).