Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Alice Meynell
-
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.
They mention the need for new funds and the way they will supplement previous subscriptions.
Harraden, Beatrice, and Elizabeth Robins. “The Sussex Hospital”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 934, p. 750.
750
They specify some of the material they have already collected from other authors and publishers to sell on...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
