Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro (14 March 1879, 16 March 1932) was an English poet born in Brussels and proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London, which helped many poets bring their work before the public.

Monro was born at 137 chaussée de Charleroi, Saint-Gilles/St Gillis, Brussels, on 14 March 1879, youngest of three surviving children of Edward William Monro (1848–1889), civil engineer, and his wife and first cousin, Arabel Sophia (1849–1926), daughter of Peter John Margary, also a civil engineer. Monro's father was born at Marylebone and died aged 41 when Monro was only nine years old. This loss may have influenced his character as a poet. The Monro family was well established in Bloomsbury. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Henry Munro FRCP MD, was a surgeon, born at Gower St, Bloomsbury, in 1817.

Monro was educated at Radley College and at Caius College, Cambridge. His first collection of poetry was published in 1906. He also edited a poetry magazine, The Poetry Review, which became influential. In 1913, he founded the Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street in Bloomsbury, where he published new collections at his own expense and sometimes made a profit, while providing a welcoming environment for readers and poets. Several poets, including [[Wilfrid Gibson]], lodged in the rooms above the shop. Monro and the Poetry Bookshop were also involved with Edward Marsh in publishing the Georgian Poetry series.

Monro wrote few war poems himself, but his "Youth in Arms" quartet, written in the early months, is one of the first attempts to envisage the "human psychology" of soldiering and understand "how ungrudgingly Youth dies." These poems were inspired by Monro’s fears for his friend, Basil Watt, whom he dearly loved and who was later killed at Loos. Monro’s moving elegy for Watt, "Lament in 1915", is a monologue in unornamented, modern language.

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