{\b Alice Meynell}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 17 August 1847

{\b Date of Death}.: 27 November 1922

{\b Works}.

Preludes  (1875), Poems  (1893), The Rhythm of Life  (1893), The Colour of 
Life  (1896), Other Poems  (1896), Later Poems  (1902), Collected Poems  
(1913), Poems on the War  (1916),  A Father to Women  (1917), Hearts of 
Controversy  (1917), Second Person Singular  (1921), Last Poems  (1923).

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Shepherdess', 'A Dead Harvest', 'At Night', 'The Lady Poverty', 'November 
Blue', 'In Early Spring', 'Renouncement', 'A Poet of One Mood', 'Maternity', 
'I Am The Way', 'To a Daisy', 'A Letter From a Girl to Her Own Old Age', 
'Chimes'.

{\b General Comment}.

Alice Meynell was a highly esteemed poet and essayist in Victorian England. 
She was born in Barnes, Surrey, but spend most of her early years travelling 
with her artistic family to Italy France and Switzerland. She and her sister 
Elizabeth (Lady Butler, a painter) were educated by their father, James 
Thompson, who was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. Christina Weller, 
their mother, was a concert pianist. In 1864 the family returned to London to 
live. Alice did not enjoy life there. She converted to Roman Catholicism 
during this period in addition to espousing the necessity of work for women. 
Her first published work, Preludes  (1875), was well received and gained her a 
place amongst the Victorian literary establishment of Alfred Tennyson and 
George Meredith. In 1877 she married Wilfrid Meynell, a Catholic journalist. 
They had seven children. During her marriage Alice contributed frequently to 
the main periodicals of the day: Spectator, Pall Mall Gazette, and National 
Observer. She also published five more volumes of poetry.

Her early poetry is said to resemble Christina Rossetti's in that it displays 
strong emotions, religious feeling, and a sensitive rendering of nature. In 
Other Poems  (1896) she altered her style, making the language more restrained 
and sparing. She made a lecture tour of America in the years 1901-2. Her Later 
Poems  (1902) reflect a further change in content to more modern 
preoccupations such as violence, the tension between urban and rural life, and 
the decay of nature. Poems on the War  (1916) and A Father of Women  (1917) 
were privately printed by her son Francis, also a conscientious objector, and 
founder of Pelican Press. In relative terms, Alice's poetic output was 
considerably smaller than her prose journalism probably because she wrote for 
a living. She supported women's suffrage and was an ardent advocate of 
pacifism. Her essays on women and writing were collected in 1926 and 1947 and 
include 'Charlotte and Emily Bronte', 'Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters', 'Mrs 
Johnson' (a defence of Dr Johnson's wife) and 'Jane Austen'. She spent her 
final years in Grentham, Sussex, and wrote and published up to the time of her 
death.