Viola Meynell

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Viola Meynell (1885 – 1956) was an English writer and Poet; her married name was Dallyn. She wrote around 20 books, being best known for short stories and novels.

Her parents were Wilfrid and Alice Meynell. Her father was a publisher of note Burnes and Oates and her mother whose maiden name was Thompson was the sister of the well known artist Lady Butler, Charge of the Greys. Her parents had a chaotic and busy literary household in Palace Court, Nottinghill Gate, London. There was a constant stream of visitors such as Robert Browning, Stevenson, Henley, Coventry Patmore, George Meredith, Francis Thompson, Stephen Phillips, W. B. Yeats, Gilbert Chesterton, Sir Shane Leslie, and others more or less renowned.

Her brother Francis Meynell was the driving force of The Nonesuch Press, with whom in the pre-war days she made home made books on the kitchen table, dying with onion skins and typing her verse to be stitched by hand into the pages.

They had a second home in the country at Greatham in Sussex where Viola had her only child John Jacob (Jake) Dallyn in 1922. Marrying a local farmer Johnny Dallyn, a neighbour. She was romantically linked to Maitland Radford, Bill Stabb an artist who illustrated her novel "Cross in Hand Farm" and Martin Secker the publisher.

She was an early supporter of D. H. Lawrence, offering practical help in the way of typing his manuscripts and accommodation, by way of a room in her home at Greatham. She was also a champion of Herman Melville at a time when he was unfashionable. She engineered the first publishing of Moby Dick in England. Whilst Lawrence stayed with her at Greatham he wrote England My England, a thinly disguised and unpleasant jab at her family. Greatham became its own centre with visitors as varied as Eric Gill, Hilaire Belloc, and Cynthia Asquith,

Her books sold well, many of them being republished both in England and in America.

She had a large circle of literary friends and correspondents, including Katherine Mansfield, Compton Mackenzie and T. H. White. She is buried in Houghton Catholic Church cemetery near Greatham in Sussex.

[edit] Works

Martha Vane (1910) first novel, published anonymously
Cross in Hand Farm (1911)
Lot Barrow (1913)
Modern Lovers (1914)
Columbine (1915)
Narcissus (1916)
Julian Grenfell(1917)
Second Marriage (1918)
Verses (1919)
Antonia (1921)
Young Mrs Criuise (1924)
A Girl Adoring (1927)
Alice Meynell (1929)
The Frozen Ocean (1930) Poetry.
Follow Thy Fair Sun (1935)
Kissing The Rod (1937)
An Anthology of Nature Poetry (1942)
Letters of J.M. Barrie (1943) editor
Lovers (1944)
First Love and Other Stories (1947) sold out in months.
Ophelia (1951)
Francis Thompson and Wilfrid Meynell (1952)
Louise and Other Stories (1954)
The Best of Friends: Further Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1956) editor
Collected Stories (1957)