The Colour of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen and Heard

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell (1847-1922) was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. Preludes (1875) was her first poetry collection, illustrated by her elder sister Elizabeth. The work was warmly praised by Ruskin, although it received little public notice. After Alice converted to the Roman Catholic Church (1868 to 1880), her writings migrated to subjects of religious matters. This eventually led her to the Catholic newspaper publisher and editor Wilfrid Meynell (1852-1948) in 1876. A year later (1877) she married Meynell, and they settled in Kensington. They became proprietor and editor of The Pen, the Weekly Register, Merry England, and other magazines. Alice was much involved in editorial work on publications with her husband, and in her own writing, poetry and prose. Her prose essays were remarkable for fineness of culture and peculiar restraint of style. Her other works include The Rhythm of Life (1893), The Color of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen and Heard (1896), The Spirit of Place and Other Essays (1898), Later Poems (1901), and Essays (1914).