Call Number:

F0159

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

20 item (20 pages)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0099, F0159, Harriet Monroe letters to Grant Hyde Code, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1925-1933, 1936 (inclusive)

Creator:

Monroe, Harriet, 1860-1936

Form:

Letters (correspondence)

Abstract:

Letters from American poet and Poetry editor Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) to American poet, editor, and teacher Grant Hyde Code (1896-1974), detailing a professional correspondence centering on his submissions to and support of Poetry.

American poet and editor Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) is best known for her work as founder and chief editor of

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, a periodical devoted solely to poetry that shaped the Modernist movement in the United States.

Monroe was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 23, 1860. Educated at Georgetown's Visitation Convent, Monroe strove to be a poet and dramatist but worked to support herself as an art critic for the

Chicago Tribune and freelance reporting and teaching. She published a collection of poetry, Valeria and Other Poems as well as a book of plays The Passing Show: Five Modern Plays in Verse, though she continued to struggle with how little poets were paid and recognized for their art.

In 1912, on a budget of $5,000 a year from supporters, Monroe founded

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse after she was repeatedly frustrated with the publication opportunities for poets in the United States. Along with Alice Corbin Henderson as assistant editor; Ezra Pound as foreign correspondent; and Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, Henry Blake Fuller, and Elizabeth Wyatt serving on the advisory board, Monroe helped to shape American modernist poetry. Poetry featured poems from Ernest Hemingway, Amy Lowell, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stephens, and W.H. Auden, among others.

Monroe continued editing

Poetry until her death in 1936, often traveling to promote the publication and poetry in general. Later in her life, she also worked on her autobiography, A Poet’s Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World, published posthumously in 1938.

Markowski, Kimberly. "Monroe, Harriet." Last modified Feb. 2000. American National Biography Online. http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-01151.html (accessed September 19, 2013).

American poet, editor, and educator Grant Hyde Code (1896-1974) became known as a dance critic but taught English at Delaware College and The Women's College at Delaware from 1925 to 1927. He worked in many facets of the arts including poetry, drama, and dance, and was published several times in

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse.

Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on March 2, 1896, Code attended Harvard University and earned his A. B. in 1918. He became an English instructor for several institutions, including Boston University, Harvard University and Radcliffe College, and the University of Delaware. Code was an instructor for both Delaware College and the Women's College from 1925 to 1927.

Code was involved in many facets of the arts. Over the course of his career, he held positions at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and the Works Progress Administration Public Works of Art Project; he served as the circulation manager for the

American Magazine of Art and editor of publications for the Brooklyn Museum, as well as curator of its Dance Center. He wrote as a dance critic for Dance Observer from 1939 to 1940 and worked as an editorial reader for Charles Scriber & Sons and Macmillan Co. until the 1950s. He was also an actor on stage and screen.

Grant Code married Marion Osborn Graves in 1920, and they had one child, Grant Hyde Jr.

"Grant Hyde Code." Contemporary Authors Online (reproduced in Biography Resource Center). http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed September 19, 2013).

These letters from American poet and

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse editor Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) to American poet, editor, and teacher Grant Hyde Code (1896-1974) documented a professional correspondence centering on his submissions to and support of Poetry.

The letters discussed many prominent Modernist writers, particularly H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); Monroe gives Code H.D.'s address in Switzerland, and they continue to discuss H.D.'s reactions to Code's correspondence and her publications. Ezra Pound, foreign correspondent for

Poetry, is mentioned several times, including a request from Code to meet him. Louis Zukofsky is also highlighted as February 1931 editor of Poetry, as Monroe apologized on behalf of Zukofsky for a perceived slight to Code. Jessica Nelson North wrote one card in the collection to Code, acting as editor while Monroe was out of the country. Other poets of note mentioned are Charles Olson, Winfield Scott, and Yvor Winters.

Monroe had been interested in including the University of Delaware as a stop on her 1927 lecture tour; Code supported her visit, but the proposal was apparently rejected by the university. Some of Code's poetry was published by

Poetry during this period, including "Poet," "Nocturne," and "Brief Sequence." Code's career was discussed, but most of the correspondence focused on submissions to Poetry and its financial issues.

Arranged in chronological order.