Isabel Meredith

Isabel Meredith was the joint pen name used by sisters Olivia Rossetti Agresti and Helen Rossetti. They were the daughters of writer and critic William Michael Rossetti and belonged to the wider Rossetti family, long associated with British literary and artistic life.

The name is most closely linked to A Girl Among the Anarchists (1903), a novel drawn from the sisters' direct encounters with the anarchist movement in London. Olivia and Helen had also edited The Torch, a journal connected with anarchist politics, which gave their fiction an unusual immediacy and detail.

Today, Isabel Meredith is remembered less as a single biographical figure than as a fascinating literary identity shared by two sisters who turned youthful political experience into a lively, observant work of fiction.