Alice Meynell

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Standard Name: Meynell, Alice
Birth Name: Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson
Indexed Name: A. C. Thompson
Pseudonym: A. C. Thompson
Married Name: Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell
Pseudonym: Alice Oldcastle
Pseudonym: Francis Phillimore
AM was a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century poet, as well as the author of criticism, journalism, essays, art reviews, introductions, and translations. Her output amounted to ten essay collections and six poetry volumes during her lifetime (not including those selected or anthologised). AM 's poetry and journalism were both guided by her voluntary obedience to the Catholic Church . Stylistically innovative, her essays pay close attention to form on the one hand and empirical truth on the other. Her reputation during her lifetime was astonishingly high. Male contemporaries like George Meredith and Coventry Patmore ranked her poetry and prose with the greatest writers of the English tradition.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
98
Tuell, Anne Kimball. Mrs. Meynell and her Literary Generation. Dutton.
107, 178

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Publishing Mary Frances Billington
MFB was a contributor to the first issue of Merry England, an illustrated literary monthly magazine launched in London by Alice and Wilfrid Meynell and sold for one shilling.
Brake, Laurel, and Marysa Demoor, editors. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism In Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press.
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bottome
PB and her friend Lislie (Hope de Lisle Brock ) were thrilled at meeting Alice Meynell , whose poetry they felt expressed the deepest feelings of [their] hearts.
Bottome, Phyllis. The Challenge. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
358, 362-3
Intertextuality and Influence Phyllis Bottome
PB met Alice Meynell in June 1912. From an early ag, PB had great enthusiasm for her poetry, which she read over and over. Despite some reservations about the influence of Catholicism on Meynell's writing...
Literary responses Emily Brontë
Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson published...
Literary responses Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Critics were divided about the success of the poem, as was perhaps to be expected given EBB 's passionate embrace of Italian nationalism and her criticism of British foreign policy. The Guardian called it an...
Textual Production Mary Carey
These had been written over a number of years. MC 's own manuscript, formerly owned by the family of the poet Alice Meynell , is now the property of scholar Germaine Greer .
Healey, R. M. “Interview with Germaine Greer”. Book and Magazine Collector, Vol.
180
, pp. 26-34.
29-30
The...
Publishing Mary Cowden Clarke
On a visit to Westwood House at Sydenham in July 1881 MCC was working on Uncle, Peep, and I: A Child's Novel, a book for American children suggested to her by Mrs Huntington; it...
Other Life Event Ella Hepworth Dixon
EHD served as Vice-President of the Femina Vie Heureuse and Northcliffe Prizes for Literature. She served with Alice Meynell on the Executive Committee of the Lyceum Club .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Dixon, Ella Hepworth. "As I Knew Them". Huchinson.
121-3
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Ella Hepworth Dixon
In a chapter devoted to Some Women Writers she praises, among others, Sheila Kaye-Smith , Margaret Kennedy (particularly for The Constant Nymph), Elizabeth von Arnim , and Violet Hunt . Authors who receive whole...
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Friends, Associates Eleanor Farjeon
Back in London she acquired a circle of largely musical friends, many of them later well-known names, including Myra Hess and Clifford and Arnold Bax . Later this circle expanded to include literary people: Viola Meynell
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eleanor Farjeon
EF prints here the letters written to her by Thomas, whom she loved (though he did not return her love), and who was killed in the First World War. She provides a vivid context for...
Friends, Associates Sarah Grand
In 1896 SG met George Meredith (who had rejected her manuscript of The Heavenly Twins some years earlier) and Alice Meynell in the Surrey Hills, at Burford Bridge Hotel,Box Hill, near Dorking.
Kersley, Gillian. Darling Madame: Sarah Grand and Devoted Friend. Virago Press.
89-90
politics Sarah Grand
In an interview in 1896, SG made clear her belief in the need for female suffrage: We shall do no good until we get the Franchise, for however well-intentioned men may be, they cannot understand...
Occupation Germaine Greer
GG 's love of books also expresses itself acquisitively. She says she is not really a collector, but admits: Some people read Cosmopolitan, but I read Christie's catalogues.
Healey, R. M. “Interview with Germaine Greer”. Book and Magazine Collector, Vol.
180
, pp. 26-34.
26
She names as the most...

Timeline

1879: Painter Elizabeth (Thompson), Lady Butler,...

Building item

1879

Painter Elizabeth (Thompson), Lady Butler , sister of poet Alice Meynell , fought unsuccessfully to become the first woman elected as a Royal Academy member.

2 July 1914: The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited...

Building item

2 July 1914

The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis , formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.

Texts

Meynell, Alice. A Father of Women, and Other Poems. Burns and Oates, 1917.
Meynell, Alice. Alice Meynell: Prose and Poetry. Editors Page, Frederick and Vita Sackville-West, Jonathon Cape, 1947.
Meynell, Alice. Ceres’ Runaway. Constable, 1909.
Meynell, Alice. “Christina Rossetti”. New Review, Vol.
12
, pp. 201-6.
Meynell, Alice. Collected Poems of Alice Meynell. Burns and Oates, 1913.
Meynell, Alice. Essays. Burns and Oates, 1914.
Meynell, Alice. Hearts of Controversy. Burns and Oates, 1917.
Meynell, Alice, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Introduction”. Prometheus Bound and Other Poems, Ward, Lock and Bowden, 1896, p. v - xv.
Meynell, Alice. “Introduction”. Alice Meynell: Prose and Poetry, edited by Vita Sackville-West et al., Jonathon Cape, 1947, pp. 7-26.
Meynell, Alice. John Ruskin. Blackwood, 1900.
Meynell, Alice. Later Poems. J. Lane, 1901.
Meynell, Alice. Other Poems. Privately printed, 1896.
Meynell, Alice. Poems on the War. Privately printed by Clement Shorter, 1915.
Meynell, Alice, and Elizabeth Thompson. Preludes. Henry S. King, 1875.
Meynell, Alice. “Renouncement”. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online: The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900, edited by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.
Meynell, Alice. “Summer in England, 1914”. Times.
Meynell, Alice. The Children. John Lane, 1896.
Meynell, Alice. The Colour Of Life. John Lane, 1896.
Meynell, Alice, editor. The Flower of the Mind. G. Richards, 1897.
Meynell, Alice. “The Lady of the Lambs”. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online: The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900, edited by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.
Meynell, Alice. The Last Poems of Alice Meynell. Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1923.
Meynell, Alice. The Rhythm of Life. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893.
Meynell, Alice. The Second Person Singular. H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921.
Meynell, Alice. The Spirit of Place. John Lane, 1898.