Wilfrid Meynell

Wildfrid Meynell (17 November 1852, Newcastle-upon-Tyne – 20 October 1948, PulboroughObituary, "The Times", 22 October 1948] ), who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym John Oldcastle, was a British newspaper publisher and editor.

Born of an old Yorkshire family on his father's side, he was related to a family of distinguished Quakers on his mother's side: his grandfather was Samuel Tuke, and James Hack Tuke and Daniel Hack Tuke were uncles.

In 1870, aged 18, Meynell became a convert to Roman Catholicism. He married the writer Alice Thompson in 1877.The pair's first effort at periodical publishing was "The Pen", a short-lived critical monthly review. In 1881 he accepted Cardinal Manning's invitation to edit the Catholic "Weekly Register", and continued to do so until 1899. Meynell later founded and edited (1883-94) the magazine "Merry England", in which he discovered and sponsored the poet Francis Thompson.

Meynell wrote biographies of Manning, John Henry Newman and Pope Leo XIII. He contributed to a wide range of periodicals including the "Contemporary Review", "The Art Journal", the "Magazine of Art", the "Athenaeum", the "Academy", the "Saturday Review", the "Pall Mall Budget|", the "Illustrated London News", the "Daily Chronicle" and the Nineteenth Century. ["Men and women of the time", 15th ed., 1899. "The Catholic who's who and year book", 1910.] By the 1920s he principally wrote for the "Dublin Review" and the "Tablet".

Wilfrid and Alice Meynell had nine children, including the founder of The Nonesuch Press, Francis Meynell.

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*worldcat id|lccn-no98-84890
*NRA|P19744