Poet and editor, Harriet Monroe played a critical role in the renaissance of modern poetry that took place in the early twentieth century. Literary historians have accorded Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which she founded in 1912 and edited until her death in 1936, a permanent place in the shaping forces of modern poetry. The abundant richness of this movement might well have been less spectacular without the encouragement and vitality which Poetry offered in those years when young poets were seeking to break the bonds of traditionalism and to create a new poetic voice for the modern age.

A woman of charm and strong will, Harriet Monroe was first a poet, and, because she cared deeply for the meaning of poetry as an art, she was a truly responsive and sensitive editor. Some literary figures are important because of the excellence of their works; others, because of the crucial...