Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Viola Meynell
-
Standard Name: Meynell, Viola
Birth Name: Viola Mary Gertrude Meynell
Married Name: Viola Mary Gertrude Dallyn
Nickname: Prue
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.
Cynthia was also a friend of Viola Meynell
and of Enid Bagnold
, whose Sussex homes were close to that of the Asquiths during the Second World War. Thirkell, as well as Lawrence, Bagnold, and...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Carswell
Catherine Jackson, her next-door neighbour Ivy Low
(who later married Maxim Litvinov
, who after the Russian Revolution became a Soviet diplomat), and Low's friend Viola Meynell
, shared an admiration for D. H. Lawrence's...
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...
EJ
contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann
's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell
. In her introduction to Thackeray
's Vanity...
AM
's daughter-biographer Viola Meynell
, however, dated her parents' wedding to the autumn 1877.
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape.
61
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House.
67
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
98
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
19
Family and Intimate relationships
Alice Meynell
AM
's fifth child was Viola Meynell
. She became a poet and novelist, and published a memoir of her mother in 1929.
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape.
prelims
Residence
Alice Meynell
The house stood on enough land for Wilfrid Meynell to build houses for his grown-up children to occupy when they came to visit. Other visitors included D. H. Lawrence
, who wrote The Rainbow while...
Literary responses
Alice Meynell
The Pall Mall Gazette praised AM
's dramatic criticism in particular as the best of the age.
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House.
132
George Meredith
admired her devout but open mind, and declared that she would some day rank as...
Literary responses
Alice Meynell
Woolf met AM
in 1909 at a tea-party in Florence, Italy. She recorded her first, not entirely positive, impression: a lean, attenuated woman, who had a face like that of a transfixed hare....
Textual Production
Alice Meynell
Immediately after AM
's death, her daughter Viola
began collecting material for a biography, Alice Meynell: A Memoir, which was published in 1929. AM
's writing has been anthologised in English Critical Essays, Twentieth...