Poetry Bookshop
The Poetry Bookshop operated at 35 Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) in the Bloomsbury district of central London, from 1913 to 1926. It was the brainchild of Harold Monro, and was supported by his moderate income. The Bookshop not only sold, but also published, poetry by living poets.
Also recorded as The Poetry Bookshop
Poetry Bookshop
- Founded
- 1913
- Headquarters
- United Kingdom
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wikidata · Q7207484 · wikipedia · Poetry Bookshop
In this article
Overview
Overview
Readers were encouraged to browse, and several poets actually made their home there, including Wilfred Owen, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and Robert Frost. The atmosphere was welcoming, and the shop's best-sellers were hand-coloured rhyme sheets for children. During World War I, when Monro was serving in the armed forces, the shop was run almost single-handedly by his assistant, Alida Klementaski, whom he later married. Among the works published by the Poetry Bookshop were collections by Charlotte Mew and Richard Aldington and the Georgian Poetry series as well as Ezra Pound's seminal 1914 anthology Des Imagistes. Penelope Fitzgerald for quite a few years attempted to interest a publisher in a book on the shop. Her letters reveal the amount of work she did, some of which was useful to her when she wrote her biography of Charlotte Mew.
Institutional history
Dated record
Institutional history
Explore 1913
The full dated record · 3 entries
1913
Poetry Bookshop established.
1913
Poetry Bookshop is recorded from 1913.
1913
Poetry Bookshop was established or created on 1 January 1913.
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- United Kingdom
Context
Primary material
Context
The circumstances in which Poetry Bookshop stands. Established or created on 1 January 1913. Recorded at coordinates 51.5208, -0.1214. Recorded as poetry bookstore. Situated in United Kingdom. Bookshop lies within London.
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Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Poetry Bookshop”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q7207484: Poetry Bookshop
General reference · Wikidata
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Poetry Bookshop, revision 1370570723 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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reference work
Secondary witnessauthority record
General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
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