Harold Monro was both an excellent writer and a talented entrepreneur. Born March 14th, 1879 to Edward William Monro, and Arabel Sophia, Monro came from a long line of well-established men, many of which were doctors and surgeons. He would not follow the family medical tradition, and instead pursued a career as a writer and editor. He worked for a time as an editor for “The Poetry Review,” and would later establish the Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury, where he went on to publish his own work and the work of many other up-and-coming authors. Monro’s love life was complicated, and though he was rumored as being a homosexual, he would choose to only marry women. His first marriage with Dorothy Elizabeth Brown did not last long, and after the birth of their first-born son, the couple quickly separated. He would then marry Alida Klemantaski, a woman 17 years his junior, though their marriage seems to have been an intellectual rather than a physical one. Knowing this, I argue that Monro’s “Parcel of Love,” is in fact an expression of Monro’s homosexuality, and that it highlights the inner turmoil going on inside him because he was never able to experience love the way he wanted to.
Holman, Mitchell, "Harold Monro’s “Parcel of Love”: An Expression of Monro’s Homosexuality" (2018). Modernist Short Story Project. 10.