Viola Meynell

VM wrote during the earlier part of the twentieth century. Her fairly slender output includes religious novels, poetry, essays, short stories, and book reviews. Her richly emotional and subtle style is often structured by Christian diction and allusion. She tends to give her central characters happy endings heavily freighted with the symbolism of re-birth, but intense penitence for past actions is often first demanded of her female protagonists. Her positive critical reception was perhaps coloured by the high literary standing of her mother; she has as yet awakened no serious revival of interest.