Harold Monro

Poet and businessman, ascetic and alcoholic, socialist and reluctant soldier, twice-married yet homosexual, Harold Monro probably did more than anyone for poetry and poets in the period before and after the Great War, and yet his reward has been near oblivion. Troubled by his complex sexuality, Monro was a tormented soul, whose aim was to serve the cause of poetry. This biography intends to rescue Monro from the graveyard of literary history and claim for him the recognition he deserves. Poet and businessman, alcoholic, socialist and reluctant soldier; twice married yet homosexual, Harold Monro probably did more than anyone for poetry and poets in the period before and after the Great War, and yet his reward has been obscurity. Aiming to encourage the poets of the future, he befriended, among many others, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and the Imagists Rupert Brooke and the Georgians Marinetti the Futurist Wilfred Owen and other war poets and the noted women poets, Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham.