Draft:Alida Klemantaski

Alida Klemantaski (18 December 1892-31 July 1969), later Alida Monro, was a writer, editor and co-runner of the Poetry Bookshop with her husband Harold Monro. She is mostly remembered as a friend and champion of the poet Charlotte Mew, contributing a memoir to the 1953 edition of Mew's Collected Poems.

Life
Klemantaski was born in Hackney, London on 18 December 1892 to Sigismund Klemantaski, a Polish-Jewish trader, and his English wife, Lizzie, née Phillips. Alida met met Harold Monro in 1913, and married him on 27 March 1920 in Holborn, London. Alida ran the Poetry Bookshop during Monro's absence during the war. Following Monro's death in 1932, Alida lived in London until 1939, then moved to West Sussex. She died in Chichester, West Sussex in 1969.

Charlotte Mew
Alida first met Charlotte Mew on 23 November 1915 when she invited her to listen to a reading of her poetry at the Poetry Bookshop, performed by Alida herself. Alida recalls this encounter in 'Charlotte Mew - A Memoir' (1953), describing Mew as an endearingly shy and eccentric figure. In her biography of Mew, Penelope Fitzgerald notes that Alida's reading of Mew's ‘The Changeling’ and The Farmer’s Bride’ (a poem Alida had memorised on its publication in 1912) contributed to the wider popularity of Mew's work.

Work
As well as supporting poets through the Bookshop, Alida edited volumes of poetry including an anthology entitled Recent Poetry 1923-1933 (1933) and a revised and enlarged version of Twentieth-Century Poetry (1933), originally compiled by her husband. She also edited two posthumous volumes of Monro's poetry, including his Collected Poems (1933) and The Silent Pool and Other Poems (1945). A dog-lover, Alida also published a volume entitled The Popular Poodle, in collaboration with Clara Bowring, in 1953.