Francis Meynell

Sir Francis Meredith Wilfrid Meynell (12 May 1891 – 10 July 1975) was a British poet and printer at The Nonesuch Press.

He was the son of the journalist and publisher Wilfrid Meynell and the poet Alice Meynell, a suffragist and prominent Roman Catholic convert. Francis Meynell was brought in by George Lansbury to be business manager of the Daily Herald in 1913.[1] He was held in the guard room at Hounslow Barracks as a conscientious objector in World War I. Meynell was also a socialist who supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.[2] His fusion of progressive politics and conservative aesthetic tastes, similar to those of William Morris) caused some amusement amongst his friends; the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science notes that "he once set a left-wing propaganda pamphlet in Cloister Old Face and surrounded it with a border of 17th-century fleurons."[3]

Meynell married three times. His first wife was Hilda Peppercorn (1886-1962), daughter of painter Arthur Peppercorn. She was a concert pianist who performed using the name Hilda Saxe. She married Meynell in 1914 and they had one child, Cynthia. In 1925, following his divorce from Hilda, Meynell married Vera Rosalind Wynn Mendel (1895-1947). She was the daughter of Edith Wynne and William Mendel, a German born financier who had underwritten several stock market flotations in the late 19th century including Harrods and D. H. Evans. Vera and their mutual friend David Garnett provided the initial funding for the Nonesuch Press; she also helped in the early days with production and distribution. They had a son in 1930 (Benedict) and divorced in 1945.[4]

Meynell was knighted in 1946 and in the same year married Alix Kilroy (1903–1999), a civil servant with the Board of Trade. They worked together during World War II on Utility Design, an austere and functional style. After the war they lived and farmed near Lavenham[5] in Suffolk for many years. Their union was childless.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ John Shepherd, George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour (2004), p. 146
  2. ↑ Katharine Bail Hoskins, Today the Struggle: Literature and Politics in England during the Spanish Civil War. University of Texas Press, 1969, pg. 18.
  3. ↑ Dearden, James (1 February 1977). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 20 - Nigeria: Libraries in to Oregon State University Library. CRC Press. pp. 91–100. ISBN 978-0-8247-2020-9.
  4. ↑ Meynell, Francis (1971). My Lives. London: The Bodley Head. pp. 74, 153, 279.
  5. ↑ An invitation from Alix and Francis Meynell — Semple Press Retrieved 2011-11-04.

External links


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