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, 1970.
107, 178
Black and white photograph of Alice Meynell, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a black satin dress with puffed sleeves and a sun-shaped pin in the top left corner of the bodice. She has a strand of pearls around her neck and short, dark curly hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Katharine Tynan
She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where her lifelong friend Alice Meynell was also buried.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Dedications Rosamund Marriott Watson
She dedicated Vespertilia and Other Verses, which appeared by 30 November 1895, to Alice Meynell with Sincere Admiration and Friendship.
Hughes, Linda K. “’Fair Hymen holdeth hid a world of woes’: Myth and Marriage in Poems by ’Graham R. Tomson’ (Rosamund Marriott Watson)”. Victorian Poetry, No. 2, pp. 97 - 120.
98
Hughes, Linda K. “A Fin-de-Siècle Beauty and the Beast: Configuring the Body in Works by ’Graham R. Tomson’ (Rosamund Marriott Watson)”. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, No. 1, pp. 95 - 121.
117n26
Several of the poems had been previously published in Longman's, Scribner's...
Dedications Katharine Tynan
On hearing of the working title of her volume, Yeats had written, I am sure you will under the circumstances alter the title as the appearance of a book with the title you propose would...
Family and Intimate relationships Viola Meynell
Viola's mother was the poet Alice Meynell , who was nominated twice for the Poet Laureateship, although she never received it. She was also an essayist and journalist. She died on 27 November 1922.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
98
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
45-6
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House, 1981.
219
Family and Intimate relationships Katharine Tynan
They held their marriage ceremony at the home of the MeynellWilfrid Meynell s in Palace Court, London. On her marriage KT took her husband's name for social and personal purposes, although she continued to publish...
Friends, Associates George Meredith
GM knew the poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne —he sometimes stayed with them while in London. He also knew Emma Caroline Wood , Lucie Duff Gordon , Leslie Stephen , Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Friends, Associates Annie S. Swan
She also mentions a great many literary names. Among women writers whom she calls the stars of her generation were Mary Augusta Ward , Lucas Malet , Lucy Clifford , Sarah Grand , Violet Hunt
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Along with Alice Meynell , KT attended the first Women Writers' Dinner. (Said to be the brainchild of Honor Morten , this became a great annual London event, held at the Trocadero restaurant.)
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
330
Swan, Annie S. My Life. Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1934.
71
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
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Among those who frequented KT 's salon were George Russell (Æ), Irish Nationalist and Fenian leader John O'Leary , Gaelic scholar and revivalist Douglas Hyde (founder of the Gaelic League , 1893), and George Sigerson
Friends, Associates Coventry Patmore
CP 's early contacts included Alfred Tennyson , Robert Browning , Thomas Carlyle , Ralph Waldo Emerson , and John Ruskin . Later in life, he knew Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edmund Gosse . Among...
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, 1983.
89-90
Friends, Associates Evelyn Sharp
Others with whom she shared this or that memorable experience were the Meynells (Wilfrid , Alice , and Viola ), Clarence Rook and his wife, and Henry W. Nevinson , whom she eventually married...
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, 1953.
358, 362-3

Timeline

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 by Wyndham Lewis , formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.