This collection documents the literary life of British Catholic authors and editors Alice and Wilfrid Meynell, as well as their sponsorship of poet Francis Thompson. It contains materials created or collected by both Alice and Wilfrid, as well as six of their children: Everard, Francis, Madeline, Monica, Sebastian, and Viola. Materials include correspondence, drawings, ephemera, manuscripts, photographs, proofs of publications, and a scrapbook.

Alice Meynell’s materials mostly consist of correspondence she received and drafts of her poems. They also contain a couple of manuscript essays, illustrations for her first book, Preludes, by her sister, Elizabeth Butler (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson), portraits, proofs, an illuminated manuscript of The Poems of Alice Meynell; and a scrapbook of articles, reviews, and correspondence.

The bulk of Wilfrid Meynell's materials comprise correspondence with writers, editors, publishers, friends, and clergy, including: Hilaire Belloc; Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; Terrence Connolly, SJ; John Lane; Shane Leslie; Edith Sitwell; and Wilfrid Ward. Aside from his long-running literary correspondents, many of Wilfrid’s letters pertain to his management of Francis Thompson’s literary estate and legacy. Also included are royalty notices and receipts, primarily those associated with Francis Thompson; proofs of articles and reviews for Merry England; notes on ecclesiastical events in mid-nineteenth century Rome; and photographs, including one of Shane Leslie delivering a lecture and a group of photographs taken of the Francis Thompson Room at the John J. Burns Library at Boston College.

Most of the materials of the Meynell children are correspondence that documents Francis Thompson, but they also touch on the careers of Everard Meynell who was Thompson’s biographer, Francis Meynell as a publisher and graphic designer, and Viola Meynell, a novelist and memoirist.