Viola Meynell Dallyn was an English writer, novelist and poet. She wrote around 20 books, but was best-known for her short stories and novels.

Her parents were Wilfrid

Wilfrid Meynell

Wilfrid Meynell , who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym John Oldcastle, was a British newspaper publisher and editor....

 and Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.-Biography:...

. Her father was a publisher of note (Burnes and Oates) and her mother, whose maiden name was Thompson, was the sister of the well known artist Lady Butler

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, Lady Butler was a British painter, one of the few female painters to achieve fame for history paintings, especially military battle scenes, at the end of that tradition...

, (Charge of the Greys).

Her parents had a chaotic and busy literary household in Palace Court, Nottinghill Gate, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. There was a constant stream of visitors such as Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

, Stevenson

Stevenson

Stevenson is an English language patronymic surname meaning "son of Steven". Its first historical record is from pre 10th century England. People with the name include:* Alexandra Stevenson , U.S. tennis player...

, Henley

Henley

- Places :UK:*Henley-on-Thames, a town in South Oxfordshire, England**Henley Rural District, a former rural district in Oxfordshire*Henley-in-Arden, a village in Warwickshire, England*Henley, Suffolk, a village in Suffolk, England...

, Coventry Patmore

Coventry Patmore

Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.-Youth:...

, George Meredith

George Meredith

George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...

, Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893...

, Stephen Phillips

Stephen Phillips

Stephen Phillips was a highly famed English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity in his lifetime....

, W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

, G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

, Sir Shane Leslie, Sir Ronald Storrs and others more or less renowned.

Her brother Francis Meynell

Francis Meynell

Sir Francis Meredith Wilfrid Meynell was a British poet and printer at The Nonesuch Press.He was son of the writer 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. He was...

 was the driving force of The Nonesuch Press, with whom in the pre-war days she made home made books on the kitchen table, dyeing with onion skins and typing her verse to be stitched by hand into the pages.

They had a second home in the country at Greatham

Greatham

Greatham may refer to:*Greatham, County Durham*Greatham, Hampshire*Greatham, West Sussex...

, Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

 where Viola married local farmer, John Dallyn, and had her only child, a son, John Jacob ("Jake") Dallyn (b. 1922).

She was romantically linked to Maitland Radford, Bill Stabb an artist who illustrated her novel "Cross in Hand Farm" and Martin Secker

Martin Secker

Martin Secker , born Percy Martin Secker Klingender, was a London publisher who was responsible for producing the work of a distinguished group of literary authors, including D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Norman Douglas, and Henry James...

 the publisher .

She was an early supporter of D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

, offering practical help in the way of typing his manuscripts and accommodation, by way of a room in her home at Greatham. She was also a champion of Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

 at a time when he was unfashionable. She engineered the first publishing of Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...

 in England.

During Lawrence's stay at Greatham he wrote England My England, a thinly disguised and unpleasant jab at her family.
Greatham became its own centre with visitors as varied as Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...

, Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...

, and Cynthia Asquith

Cynthia Asquith

Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith was an English writer, now known for her ghost stories and diaries. She also wrote novels and edited a number of anthologies, as well as writing for children and on the British Royal family....

,

Her books sold well, many of them being republished both in England and in America. She had a large circle of literary friends and correspondents, including Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...

, Compton Mackenzie

Compton Mackenzie

Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...

 and T. H. White

T. H. White

Terence Hanbury White was an English author best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.-Biography:...

.

She is buried in Houghton Catholic Church cemetery near Greatham.

Works

• Martha Vine (1910) - published anonymously
• Cross in Hand Farm (1911)
• Lot Barrow (1913)
• Modern Lovers (1914)
• Columbine (1915)
• Narcissus (1916)
• Julian Grenfell (1917)
• Second Marriage (1918)
• Verses (1919)
• Antonia (1921)
• Young Mrs. Cruise (1924)
• A Girl Adoring (1927)
• Alice Meynell (1929)
• The Frozen Ocean (1930) Poetry.
• Follow Thy Fair Sun (1935)
• Kissing The Rod (1937)
• An Anthology of Nature Poetry (1942)
• Letters of J. M. Barrie (1943; editor)
• Lovers (1944)
• First Love and Other Stories (1947)
• Ophelia (1951)
• Francis Thompson and Wilfrid Meynell (1952)
• Louise and Other Stories (1954)
• The Best of Friends: Further Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1956) editor
• Collected Stories (1957)

Other works

• Eyes of Youth (1910) - a collection of poems by friends and family
• George Eliot (1913)
• Introduction to Romola: George Eliot (1913)
• Introduction to Felix Holt: The Radical (1913)
• Introduction to Moby Dick: Herman Melville (1925)