Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

Alice Meynell, née Thompson, was born in London, the daughter of Thomas James Thompson, a scholar, and his wife Christiana Weller, a concert pianist. Her older sister became the famous painter Elizabeth, Lady Butler. The family travelled extensively in England and Europe, and was considered somewhat bohemian. Alice converted to the Roman Catholic faith at age 21. In 1877, she married Wilfred Meynell, a writer and critic five years her junior, with whom she had eight children. They moved to London and embarked on a lifetime of journalist work. In 1881, the couple began editing the Weekly Register, a Catholic periodical they worked on for 18 years. Alice Meynell became a popular and prolific writer, and she contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Saturday Review, The World, The Scots Observer, The Tablet, The Magazine of Art, and The Art Journal. She also wrote poetry, but published only infrequently. Her work was highly regarded by her friend George Meredith. Alice Meynell also wrote biographies of Holman Hunt (1893) and John Ruskin (1900). In 1901, she travelled to the USA for a lecture tour of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Boston, where she was much celebrated. In the early decades of the 20th-century, Alice wrote and marched on behalf of women's right to vote, and was a member of the Women Writers' Suffrage League. She wrote Poems on the War, about World War I, published in 1916.