Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) was an English poet, essayist and suffragist. Born Alice Thompson, she spent much of her childhood in Italy, became a Catholic as a young woman and published her first poems, Preludes, in 1875. She married the journalist Wilfrid Meynell, with whom she edited magazines and raised eight children, and together they rescued the poet Francis Thompson from destitution. Her essays, collected in volumes such as The Rhythm of Life, were admired for their compression and precision, and her poems for their restraint. She was proposed for the laureateship, and her sister was the battle painter Elizabeth Butler.