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-handed by his assistant, Alida Klementaski, whom he later married.
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.