Title:
Poetry and Drama
Date of Publication:
15 Mar. 1913 – Dec. 1914
Place(s) of Publication:
London
Frequency of Publication:
Quarterly
Circulation:
Editor Harold Monro did not record circulation figures.
Publisher:
Poetry Bookshop, London
Physical Description:
26 cm tall; cloth bound; volume one published in brown, volume two in blue
Price:
2 shillings, 6 pence per issue / 10 shillings, 6 pence per year
Editor(s):
Harold Monro
Associate Editor(s):
Unknown
Libraries with Original Issues:
UNC Chapel Hill, Library of Congress, Indiana University, The Morgan Library & Museum, Columbia University, Emory College, University of Chicago, Hamilton University, Vassar College, Yale University, York University, Calvin College, Dartmouth College, Amherst College, University of Vermont, University of Kansas, University of Texas at Austin, UCLA, Trinity College Dublin
Reprint Editions:
Poetry And Drama. Ed Harold Monro. Vol. 1 & 2. Rpt in New York: Kraus, 1967.1-440. Print
Out of the ashes of his failed work on The Poetry Review, Harold Monro picked himself up and opened The Poetry Bookshop; from there he would publish Poetry and Drama, a relatively short-lived magazine that focused on various types of literature. Most issues began with an editorial on topics of special interest, although the order of the other subjects tended to change from issue to issue. Usually included were articles on the following topics: poems, criticism of new novels, poetry, works of theatre, and a list of recently released books. Special topics included surveys on French poetry and London theatre, reports on American poetry, as well as lists of reprints and anthologies. One issue even focused on Italian futurists poets—one of the more radical movements the periodical covered. Images didn’t frequent the pages of the magazines. Advertisements were mostly designated to the the first and last few pages, and focused on literary subjects (the Bookshop, other periodicals, and recently released books). Additionally, each issue of Poetry and Drama was sold containing a ticket to a reading at The Poetry Bookshop.
Poetry and Drama was not published with an official manifesto. Editor Harold Monro laid out some of his beliefs in his “Personal Explanation” in the first issue of the magazine, but most of what he covered was his (forced) departure from his former periodical, The Poetry Review. He stated his purpose for the periodical to serve as “‘a testing-shop for the poetry of the present, and a medium for the discussion of tendencies which may combine to make the poetry of the future’” (Hibberd). It was also important to Monro that this magazine was not restricted to an elite few. He voiced his desire for the periodical to form “a practical relation between poetry and the public” (Hibberd). Where the main focus of some other magazines was in profit or political concerns, Monro intended Poetry and Drama to popularize poetry and make it available to the masses.
Harold Monro (Mar. 14, 1879 – Mar. 16, 1932)
Editor: Mar. 1913 – Dec. 1914
Poetry and Drama had a single editor for the full two years it ran: Harold Monro. He was born in Brussels in 1879 to an English family, the youngest of three children. In Brussels he was schooled in French and English, until his father’s death in 1889, after which his mother brought him back to London. There he went to St. Peter’s College, Radley, where he struggled after his brother’s death, excelled, and was finally expelled after being caught in physical intimacy with a younger boy. Monro moved on to study at Cambridge, where he became devoted to poetry, even in the midst of studying to be a lawyer, similarly to his college friend, Maurice Browne. In 1903, soon after school, he married Maurice’s sister, Dorothy, with whom he would have a rocky marriage. In late 1911 Monro approached London’s Poetry Society, with the idea of editing their journal, which he renamed The Poetry Review—a pursuit that was short-lived, as the Society’s council forced Monro to step down in November 1912. He did not stay down for long, however, and used some of his inheritance to open The Poetry Bookshop the following month. It would serve for more than two decades as a gathering place for English poets, home to popular readings. At that same time, Monro began making plans for Poetry and Drama, which would be released in March of the next year. The magazine enjoyed a relatively successful run, but in its second year, war was declared on Germany. Monro postponed the journal and went to war, although he did not serve on the front lines. Upon returning he started up a new journal, The Monthly Chapbook, or just The Chapbook. Somewhat later in life, his spending and drinking caught up with him: bankruptcy, alcoholism, and a nearly twenty year relationship with Alida Klemantaski (a frequenter of the Bookshop) drove him and his family apart. He eventually died of tuberculosis, with Alida by his side, in 1932.
Harold Monro
“Personal Explanation”
Fancies
Studies in Emotion
“English Poetry”
Rupert Brooke
“A Note on John Webster”
“John Donne”
Edward Thomas
“Ella Wheeler Wilcox”
“Thomas Hardy of Dorchester”
“Reviewing: An Unskilled Labor”
“War Poetry”
Gilbert Cannan
“Dramatic Chronicle”
“The Drama: A Note in War Time”
F.S. Flint
“French Chronicle”
F.T. Marinetti
“Against the Earth”
The New Futurist Manifesto
Thomas Hardy
“My spirit will not haunt the mound”
Robert Frost
“The Fear”
“A Hundred Collars”
W.H. Davies
“The Bird of Paradise”
Frances Cornford
“The Old Witch in the Copse”
Ezra Pound
“Albatre”
“Society”
“The Faun”
“Tempora”
John Gould Fletcher
“Cherokee Ballads”
Edward Storer
Helen
“Translations”
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer)
On Impressionism
T.E. Hulme
“German Chronicle”
Robert Bridges
“A Letter to a Musician on English Prosody”
Rose Macaulay
“The Pond”
“Dust and Dust”
Amy Lowell
“On ‘The Cutting of an Agate’”
“Flame Apples”
“Grotesque”
“Pine, Beech and Sunlight”
Remy De Gourmont
French Literature and the War
Hibberd, Dominic. Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Print.
–––. “The New Poetry, Georgians, and Others.” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. V. 1, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955.Ed. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Morrisson, Mark S. “Performing the Pure Voice: Poetry and Drama, Elocution, Verse Recitation, and Modernist Poetry in Prewar London.” The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception, 1905-1920.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. Print.
Images. “Poetry and Drama.” Modernist Magazines Project. University of Sussex. Web. 17 September 2015.
Poetry And Drama. Ed Harold Monro. Vol. 1 & 2. Rpt in New York: Kraus, 1967.1- 440. Print.
“Poetry and Drama” compiled by Rachel Wiltshire (Davidson College, Class of 2016)