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|240x240px]] Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (/ˈmɛnəl/ MEN-uhl; née Thompson; 11 October 184727 November 1922) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. She was considered for the position of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom twice, first in 1892 on the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and later in 1913 on the death of Alfred Austin, but was never appointed to the position.
Meynell and her husband, Wilfrid Meynell, were the owners and editors of several Catholic Church publications and patrons of the poet Francis Thompson.
On her father's side, Meynell had Jamaican Creole ancestry and was a third cousin of Elizabeth Barret Browning.
Meynell suffered from ill health during her early life, and in 1868, during a bout of illness, converted to Catholic Church. During this time, she reportedly fell in love with the Jesuits Priest, Father Augustus Dignam, who had helped her in her conversion. Dignam is believed to have inspired Meynell's love poems "After Parting" and "Renouncement." By 1880, her entire family had also converted to Catholicism.
In 1876, Meynell met newspaper editor and fellow Catholic convert Wilfrid Meynell (1852-1948), who was five years her junior, and they married in 1877. The couple had eight children: Sebastian, Monica, Everard (1882–1926), Madeleine, Viola, Vivian (who died at three months), Olivia, and Francis. Viola Meynell (1885–1956) became a writer, known mainly for fiction, who later wrote a biography of her mother titled The Life of Alice Meynell (1932). Her youngest child Francis Meynell (1891–1975) became a poet and a printer who co-founded The Nonesuch Press.
After their marriage in 1877, Meynell and her husband became a proprietors and editors of various magazines, including The Pen, the Weekly Register, and Merry England, among others. Meynell was highly involved in the editorial work of these publications.
Meynell also continued to publish her own writing, including literary and art criticism, and wrote regularly for The World, The Spectator, The Magazine of Art, the Scots Observer (which became the National Observer, both edited by W. E. Henley), The Tablet, The Art Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, and The Saturday Review. Her poems show her Feminism concerns as well as her reactions to the events of World War I. "Alice Meynell", Poetry Foundation
Meynell also had a deep friendship with Coventry Patmore, whose poetry she supported, that lasted several years. In 1893, Coventry gave Meynell the manuscript for The Angel in the House, his best-known work, as a token of their friendship. Eventually, Patmore became obsessively in love with Meynell, leading her to end their friendship. She wrote the article on Patmore for the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Sargent requested Meynell to write the introduction for a collection of his works, titled The Works of John S. Sargent, R.A., in 1903.
Also in 1923, Harriet Monroe wrote of Meynell's writing, "There is a crying need for a complete edition of Alice Meynell's verse and prose...Sometimes her quest of an austere beaty is carried too far toward preciosity, but often she attains without effort a severe clarity and precision which the rising generation will do well to study."
Meynell's work has continued to be praised and studied in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with contemporary scholars including Angela Leighton and Linda Austin having published articles on Meynell and her work.
Meynell was one of the founders of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, which sought by peaceful means to achieve votes for women. Meynell established and wrote in the first edition of its newspaper The Catholic Suffragist, in 1915, "A Catholic suffragist woman is a graver suffragist on graver grounds and with weightier reasons than any other suffragist in England." Reports were shared from eleven branches (including a national congress in Wales and two societies in Scotland) and the editorial said "We dare to say that if the balance of power between men and women had been more equal the world over, we should not still be settling international disputes by swamping a continent in blood and turning Europe into a shambles."
Meynell wrote in The Tablet against Father Henry Day who preached against votes for women risking "bringing a revolution of the first magnitude". Meynell retorted "I say, most gravely, the vaster the magnitude of the revolution, the better." Where Day saw "danger" Meynell saw a "fortress of safety" for Catholic women, and she saw Anti-suffragism rhetoric as "insolence".
After a series of illnesses, including migraine and depression, Meynell died on 27 November 1922 aged 75. A posthumous collection of her Last Poems was published by Burns and Oates, a year later. Meynell is buried at Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery in London. There is a London County Council commemorative blue plaque on the front wall of the property at 47 Palace Court, Bayswater, London, W2, where she and her husband once lived, whilst the 2023 play Modest covered Alice and her sister Elizabeth's life from 1874 to 1879.
Upon Meynell's death, Jeannette Marks wrote, "Like a child my mind has kept step with hers for many years, and like a child it still runs beside her, looking up, using her living words, following her thought. In the 'running' I have lost account of time; and now, they say, she is dead... Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude!"
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