Poetic Fuel for the Fire, Literally

Although Chicago's literature has long been great, it has also enjoyed less than overwhelming popular acceptance. Under "Literary Cultures" in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Timothy B. Spears writes:

After poet Harriet Monroe pressed for and received the commission to write the dedicatory poem at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, she discovered that belles lettres ranked low on the list of artistic forms that Chicago's elite were willing to support financially. At the high point in the city's cultural uplift, Monroe's "Columbian Ode" barely sold, and the poet used the unsold copies to fuel the stove in her bedroom.