Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (née Thompson; 11 October 1847[1] – 27 November 1922[2]) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.

[4] The family moved around England, Switzerland, and France, but she was brought up mostly in Italy, where a daughter of her father's from his first marriage had settled.

During this time, she reportedly fell in love with the Jesuit Priest, Father Augustus Dignam, who had helped her in her conversion.

[6] The couple had eight children: Sebastian, Monica, Everard (1882–1926), Madeleine, Viola, Vivian (who died at three months), Olivia, and Francis.

[8] In 1875, Meynell published Preludes, her first poetry collection, illustrated by her elder sister Lady Elizabeth Butler (1846–1933).

[9][10] After their marriage in 1877, Meynell and her husband became a proprietors and editors of various magazines, including The Pen, the Weekly Register, and Merry England, among others.

At the end of the 19th century, in conjunction with uprisings against the British (among them the Indians', the Zulus', the Boxer Rebellion, and the Muslim revolt led by Muhammad Ahmed in the Sudan), many European scholars, writers, and artists, began to question Europe's colonial imperialism.

Alice Meynell was a vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, founded by Cicely Hamilton and active 1908–19.

Surely England has endured too long what is not only immodest but profoundly immoral,[26] reports were shared from eleven branches (including a national congress in Wales and two societies in Scotland) and the editorial said 'We dare to say that if the balance of power between men and women had been more equal the world over, we should not still be settling international disputes by swamping a continent in blood and turning Europe into a shambles.

[26] Meynell wrote in The Tablet against Father Henry Day who preached against votes for women risking 'bringing a revolution of the first magnitude'.

Neither of these women were given the recognition of this status[4] with the first and only female to hold the post, appointed by the monarch, being Carol Ann Duffy in 2009 -19.