Francis Meredeth Wilfrid Meynell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Meynell

Sir Francis Meredith Wilfrid Meynell (May 12, 1891—July 10, 1975) was a British poet and publisher and designer 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. He was imprisoned as a conscientious objector in World War I.

In 1915 Meynell started his first publishing venture, the Romney Street Press, printed on a small Albion hand-press at one end of his living room. Using Fell types purchased from the Oxford Press he and his friend and co-worker Stanley Morison printed two books between 1915 and 1918 (the first had to be printed twice), before he decided to publish rather than print. In 1916 he and Morison founded the Pelican Press, which was eclipsed by the Nonesuch Press in 1922, which he directed until the mid-1960s.

He was knighted in 1946. He 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 in a secluded part of Suffolk for many years. Their union was childless.

• Updated from England & Wales Deaths, GRO Indexes, 1969 - 2007 by SmartCopy: Sep 17 2015, 12:57:37 UTC