Alice Meynell

Alice Christiana Gertrude (Thompson) Meynell (22 September 1847 - 27 November 1922) was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now best remembered as a poet.

She was born in Barnes, Richmond, London, to Thomas James Thompson and Christiana (Weller) Thompson. The family moved around England, Switzerland, and France, but she was brought up mostly in Italy, where a daughter of Thomas from his first marriage had settled. Her father was a friend of Charles Dickens.

Preludes (1875) was her first poetry collection, illustrated by her elder sister Elizabeth (the artist Elizabeth Southerden (née Thompson) Butler, 1850-1933, whose husband was Lieutenant General Sir William Francis Butler). The work was warmly praised by John Ruskin, although it received little public notice. Ruskin especially singled out the sonnet Renunciation for its beauty and delicacy.

After Alice, the entire Thompson family converted to the Roman Catholicicim (1868 to 1880) and her writings migrated to subjects of religious matters. This eventually led her to the Catholic newspaper publisher and editor Wilfrid Meynell (1852 - 1948) in 1876. A year later (1877) she and Meynell married and they settled in Kensington. They became proprietor and editor of The Pen, the Weekly Register, Merry England, and other magazines. Alice and Wilfrid had a family of eight children: Sebastian, Monica, Everard, Madeleine, Viola, Vivian (who died at three months), Olivia, and Francis. Viola Meynell (1885-1956) became a prolific author in her own right and their youngest child Sir Francis Meynell (1891-1975) was a poet as well as an accomplished printer at Nonesuch Press.

Alice was much involved in editorial work on publications with her husband, and in her own writing, poetry and prose. She wrote regularly for The World, The Spectator, The Magazine of Art, The Scots Observer, The Tablet, The Art Journal, the National Observer, edited by W. E. Henley the Pall Mall Gazette, and The Saturday Review.

The British poet Francis Thompson, down and out in London and trying to recover from the opium addiction that had overtaken him, sent the couple a manuscript. His poems were first published in Wilfred's Merrie England, and the Meynells became a supporter of Thompson. His 1893 book Poems was a Meynell production and initiative. Another supporter of Thompson was the poet Coventry Patmore. Alice had a deep friendship with Patmore, lasting several years, which led to his becoming obsessed with her, forcing her to break with him.

At the end of the nineteenth century, in conjunction with uprisings against the British (among them in India and South Africa, plus involvement suppressing the bloody Muslim conquest lead by Muhammad Ahmed in the Sudan and the Boxer Rebellion in China), many European scholars, writers, and artists, especially Catholics, began to question Europe’s colonial imperialism. This issue led Alice, Wilfrid, Elizabeth, and others in their circle to speak out for the oppressed. Alice became a leading figure in the Women Writers' Suffrage League, which was founded by Cicely Hamilton and active 1908 to 1919.

Her prose essays were remarkable for their fineness of culture and peculiar restraint of style. After a series of illnesses, including migraine and depression, she died 27 November 1922. Her remains were laid to rest at Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery, London, England.

- information mostly from Wikipedia