1910's The Arts | A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World

Autobiography

By: Harriet Monroe

Date: 1938

Source: Monroe, Harriet. A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World. New York: Macmillan, 1938, 251–254.

About the Author: Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) was born in Chicago, the second daughter of Henry Stanton Monroe, a lawyer, and Martha Mitchell Monroe. A poet and an art critic for the Chicago Tribune, she also taught school and helped establish the Chicago Institute of Arts. But she is best known as the editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which she founded in 1912. Monroe died in 1936 while on a trip to Peru. Her autobiography, A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World, was published two years later, in 1938.

Introduction

The beginning of the twentieth century was a transitional time for poetry, and for literature in general. Walt Whitman had forged new ground for poets...