Selected Poems and Essays

Alice Meynell was a major British author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is the first anthology of her verse and prose to be published for over seventy-five years. Meynell was highly regarded both as a poet and as a writer of essays and was seriously proposed for the laureateship on two occasions. G.K. Chesterton said of her that she ‘never wrote a line, or even a word, that does not stand like the rib of a strong intellectual structure; a thing with the bones of thought in it’.

The present selection includes the early romantic poems of yearning, full of poignant surprises, and the terser, less personal poems of her maturity. Also included is a broad sample of Meynell’s literary essays, in each case a careful work of art. They include reflections on literature, culture and the natural world, nuanced observations on childhood, and moving defences (both specific and general) of women against trespasses on their dignity.

This selection is introduced by Alex Wong, who offers a poet’s view of Meynell’s distinctive artistic achievements and locates her within her literary contexts. It also includes an appreciative preface by the renowned feminist critic and theorist Laura Mulvey, who is the author’s great-granddaughter.