Viola Meynell

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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.

Milestones

15 October 1885

VM was born at Phillimore Place, Kensington, the daughter of two writers.
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature gives her birthdate as 1886.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House.
71

October 1910

VM published anonymously, with Herbert and Daniel , her first novel, Martha Vine: A Love Story of Simple Life.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen.
72

1929

Seven years after her mother's death, VM published what is probably her best-remembered work today, Alice Meynell : A Memoir.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153

1956

Only months before VM died, Hart-Davis issued her edited volume The Best of Friends: Further Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge), received from his wide circle of friends.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153

27 October 1956

VM died at Greatham after years of struggling with a fatal form of motor neuron disease.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153

Biography

Birth and Family

15 October 1885

VM was born at Phillimore Place, Kensington, the daughter of two writers.
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature gives her birthdate as 1886.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House.
71