Everard Meynell

Born in 1882, he was the son of writers Alice Meynell and Wilfrid Meynell, placing him at the heart of an unusually active literary household. He was educated in that atmosphere of books, journalism, and Catholic intellectual life, and in his early years he also studied art, including time connected with the Newlyn school in Cornwall.

He is best remembered as the author of The Life of Francis Thompson (1916), a biography of the poet whose work mattered deeply to his family’s circle. His writing reflects close personal knowledge of that world, and it remains valuable as a portrait of the people, friendships, and religious culture around Thompson.

Meynell died in 1926 at the age of forty-four. Though less famous than some members of his family, he left behind work that offers a vivid window into English literary and Catholic life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.