Alice Meynell (September 22, 1847 - November 27, 1922) was an English writer and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. She was born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson, in Barnes, London. Her father was Thomas James Thompson, a friend of Charles Dickens; she was brought up mostly in Italy. Preludes (1875) was her first poetry collection, illustrated by her elder sister Elizabeth (the artist Lady Elizabeth Butler, 1850-1933, whose husband was Sir William Butler).

In 1877 she married the journalist and author Wilfrid Meynell, a Roman Catholic: Alice had become a Catholic convert earlier in the 1870s. He became proprietor and editor of the Weekly Register, and other magazines. While having a family of eight children (the youngest of them being Francis Meynell 1891-1975, the poet and printer at the Nonesuch Press) she was much involved in editorial work on publications with her husband, and in her own writing, poetry and prose. She wrote regularly for the National Observer, edited by W. E. Henley the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Saturday Review.

The Meynells supported Francis Thompson when he was down and out in London, and sent a manuscript in 1888; his poems were first published in Wilfred's Merrie England. His 1893 book Poems was a Meynell production and initiative.

She was later a leading figure in the Women Writers' Suffrage League, active 1908 to 1919, founded by Cicely Hamilton.

Works

• Preludes (1875) poems
• The Rhythm of Life (1893) essays
• Poems (1893),
• Holman Hunt (1893)
• Selected Poems of Thomas Gordon Hake (1809-1995) (1894) editor
• The Colour of Life and other Essays (1896)
• Poetry of Pathos and Delight by Coventry Patmore (1896) editor
• The Flower of the Mind (1897) anthology.
• The Children (1897) essays
• The Spirit of Place (1898) essays
• London Impressions (1898) and
• Ruskin (1900)
• Later Poems (1901)
• The Work of John S. Sargent (1903)

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

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