Flower of the Mind

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell (1847-1922) was an English writer, editor, critic, poet and suffragist. Her prose essays were remarkable for fineness of culture and peculiar restraint of style. Preludes (1875) was her first poetry collection. The work was warmly praised by Ruskin especially the sonnet Renunciation for its beauty and delicacy. After Alice converted to the Roman Catholic Church, her writings migrated to subjects of religious matters which led her to the Catholic newspaper publisher and editor Wilfrid Meynell whom she married a year later. The couple became proprietor and editor of The Pen, the Weekly Register, Merry England, and other magazines. Alice was much involved in editorial work on publications and in her own writing, poetry and prose. She wrote regularly for The World, The Spectator and the National Observer. At the end of the nineteenth century, many European writers and artists, especially Catholics, began to question Europe's colonial imperialism, and its attempt to rule the world. Alice, Wilfrid, and others spoke out for the oppressed and she became a leading figure in the Women Writers' Suffrage League.