During his own lifetime, Harold Monro was more widely known for his services to the cause of poetry in general than for his own writings. And for him, poetry was a cause, pursued with a notably disinterested ardor. He was an editor, a publisher, and, above all, the proprietor of the Poetry Book-shop, a sort of twentieth-century Mermaid Tavern--a meeting place and clearinghouse for poets and their public, the scene for twenty-three years of readings by all the best-known figures of the literary world, even at times a rooming house for indigent writers. As a poet, Monro was known, if at all, as the author of a few anthology pieces, a minor Georgian with a knack for pleasant domestic sentiment, a celebrator of cats and teakettles and weekends in the country. Today, however, a different picture of the man has emerged, and the priorities of the career are...