Viola Meynell

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Katharine Tynan
KT travelled through Italy in the spring of 1921 with a party of seven other women, including writer Viola Meynell .
Tynan, Katharine. The Wandering Years. Constable.
289
Further excursions lay ahead of her. She travelled throughout France in what she...
Family and Intimate relationships Violet Trefusis
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls Violet's feeling for the poet Julian Grenfella more serious attachment than that to Wellesley. Grenfell, who wrote at least one still-remembered poem (Into Battle) and...
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...
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich through Jane Austen , Emily and Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Literary responses Amber Reeves
After the appearance of her first three novels, two critics gave AR a significant place in accounts of the current state of fiction. R. Brimley Johnson characterised her as a sex-explorer, free from either...
Friends, Associates Betty Miller
BM 's friends included Olivia Manning , Rosamond Lehmann , Stevie Smith , Inez Holden , Viola Meynell , and Eleanor Farjeon .
Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, p. vii - xviii.
xv
In wartime she met and immediately took to Adrian Stephen ,...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Alice Meynell
Alice Thompson married Wilfrid Meynell , a journalist and editor who had converted to Catholicism at eighteen.
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 Katherine Mansfield
After Mansfield's death, Woolf wrote in her diary: it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it.
Gunn, Kirsty. “How the Laundry Basket Squeaked”. London Review of Books, Vol.
35
, No. 7, pp. 25-6.
25
KM appears in episodes in more than one novel by her friend...
Friends, Associates F. Tennyson Jesse
Gordon Place became the centre of an active female literary community, which included Elizabeth Bowen , Rose Macaulay , Virginia Woolf , Ivy Low (who was also a good friend of Viola Meynell ), Ivy Compton-Burnett
Textual Production Elizabeth Jenkins
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...

Timeline

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Texts

Meynell, Viola. A Girl Adoring. E. Arnold, 1927.
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape, 1929.
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape, 1947.
Meynell, Viola. Antonia. M. Secker, 1921.
Meynell, Viola. Columbine. M. Secker, 1915.
Meynell, Viola, and Charles Stabb. Cross-in-Hand Farm. Herbert and Daniel, 1911.
Meynell, Viola. Follow Thy Fair Sun. J. Cape, 1935.
Meynell, Viola. Francis Thompson and Wilfrid Meynell: A Memoir. Hollis and Carter, 1952.
Meynell, Viola, editor. Friends of a Lifetime. J. Cape, 1940.
Meynell, Viola. Kissing the Rod. J. Cape, 1937.
Barrie, Sir J. M. Letters of J.M. Barrie. Editor Meynell, Viola, Peter Davies, 1942.
Meynell, Viola. Lot Barrow. M. Secker, 1913.
Meynell, Viola. Martha Vine. Herbert and Daniel, 1910.
Meynell, Viola. Modern Lovers. M. Secker, 1914.
Meynell, Viola. Narcissus. M. Secker, 1916.
Meynell, Viola. Ophelia. James Barrie, 1951.
Meynell, Viola. Second Marriage. M. Secker, 1918.
Meynell, Viola, editor. The Best of Friends. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956.
Meynell, Viola. The Frozen Ocean. M. Secker, 1930.
Meynell, Viola. Verses. M. Secker, 1919.
Meynell, Viola. Young Mrs. Cruse. E. Arnold, 1924.