learning journal 11: thoughts on other things

I already wrote about Alice Meynell for an annotated source, but I have been researching her in one of my classes. I am really looking forward to studying her life and her essays while in London. What I have been thinking, though, is the difference between studying authors and their works in a library and studying them on Location. Thanks to the wealth of information I have available to me through BYU's databases and library resources, I can find out a LOT about the authors and their writing just in a library. So what will be the difference?

To illustrate what my thoughts were about this, here is a list of facts about Alice Meynell that I have found out online:

               Poet and essayist

       British 

        Converted to Catholicism at 21

       Husband Wilfrid Meynell, publisher and editor

       Settled in Kensington

       Eight children

       Participated in Women’s Suffrage movement

      Died November 1922

      Buried in the Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery in London

      Okay, so I already know she's a British poet and essayist, and I know she was Catholic, and I know she lived in Kensington, she was part of the Women's Suffrage movement, and was buried in London. But there are so many things I can find out while in London! For example, I can research the presses she used to publish her books, and I can find out if they are still standing. I can look up her house in Kensington and visit it. About that: I actually found out that her former home in Kensington is on the same street--Palace Court--as the BYU London center! There's a plaque outside that says "Alice Meynell lived here...etc" so I was thinking I could knock on the door and talk to the person who currently owns the house and see if they know anything about Meynell, get a little bit of history on the house, etc. I can also visit the cemetery where she was buried (I have already mentioned the obsession that I have with cemeteries), and I can visit the sites that she talks about in her essays to get a better picture in my head of what she was feeling and thinking when she wrote. For example, she mentions the Serpentine in one of her essays that I have read, and visiting the Serpentine (river) will help me get a deeper perspective on the context of her essays. 

      See all of these cool things I can learn by being in London? When I analyze how much I can really find out about her by tracing her footsteps through London, I feel like it justifies even more my field study in London. 

Amen.

annotated source 01/25

Meynell, Alice. Essays. London, 1914.

This collection of essays has an obvious connection to my project because Meynell was a Londoner who wrote essays; however, she, along with a few other female essayists of her time, has not in the past been considered canonical. It is likely because her essays may have garnered a smaller audience when she published them, but it also may be due to the face that she seems to be more of an undiscovered jewel in essaying. The essays in this collection that I’ve read chronicle more of her meditations on a subject rather than focusing on her life in general, which is beneficial because many essays of today are more autobiographical rather than essayistic. Autobiography, generally, goes along with the assumption that one’s life is important, so the point is to relay life experiences that the audience must hear. Essaying focuses more on perspective; the writer’s perception of the world around him or her is given more priority than his or her inherent importance. So in this light, Meynell’s essays will give me good experience balancing perception with life experience (and how to do that without being superfluous). I will also enjoy learning more about Meynell’s life in London, and what kind of audience originally received her essays.