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| birth_place = Danapur, Bengal Presidency, India192909|1854}}| death_place = Worthing, England| movement = Anarchist}}William Charles Owen (1854–1929) was a British–American anarchist best known for his activism during the Mexican Revolution and English-language translations of Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón.

Early life and career

William C. Owen was born in Danapur, Bengal Presidency, India to an aristocratic family in 1854 while his family was stationed in India with the British army.{{r|Avrich Voices}}WEB, Owen, William Charles, William Charles Owen Papers,search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH01455, 2021-06-19, search.iisg.amsterdam, English, He attended school in England,{{r|Poole 40}} and studied law in London.{{r|Avrich Voices}} Upon completion,{{r|Poole 40}} he moved to the United States in 1884,{{r|Avrich Voices}} whereupon he settled and taught in California, among other jobs.{{r|Poole 40}} Owen became interested in socialism and translated multiple works by anarchist Peter Kropotkin into English. He later met the figure on a visit to England, and their correspondence brought Owen into anarchism. Owen returned to the United States to work in newspapers. He spent two years at the Klondike during its gold rush, which influenced his attitudes towards capitalism and land exploitation.{{r|Poole 40}} Owen became an activist for anarchist, labor, and prison reform in southern California.{{r|Avrich Voices}} He worked as a court reporter and wrote the 1910 Crime and Criminals against the American jails.{{r|Poole 40}} With the Mexican Revolution in the early 1910s, Owen befriended the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón and for six years remained close while Owen edited the English-language section of Magón’s anarchist newspaper Regeneración.{{r|Poole 40|Avrich Voices}} Owen wrote about the Mexican Revolution for other English-language anarchist journals{{r|Poole 40}} and published both a pamphlet, The Mexican Revolution (1912), and a newspaper, Land and Liberty (1914–1915).{{r|Avrich Voices}} (“Tierra y Libertad” was a slogan of the Magón Mexican Liberal Party.BOOK, Streeby, Shelley, Radical Sensations: World Movements, Violence, and Visual Culture,books.google.com/books?id=YkO2AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA107, 2013, Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 978-0-8223-9554-6, 107, ) Owen fought Magón’s arrest from 1912 to 1914, but was himself included in a 1916 warrant. With advance notice{{r|Poole 40}} and faced with deportation, Owen absconded for England, where he supported Kropotkin’s call for Allied support in World War I and wrote for the English anarchist periodical Freedom,BOOK, Avrich, Paul, Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America,books.google.com/books?id=8z8mdUYp-6gC&pg=PA486, 2005, Oakland, California, AK Press, 978-1-904859-27-7, 486, of which he later became an editor.{{r|Poole 40}} Owen died in Worthing, England, on June 9, 1929.{{sfn|Poole|1977|p=144}}

Works

• Anarchism versus Socialism (1922)

References

Further reading

• Reichert, William O. Partisans of Freedom. pp. 512–519.
• BOOK, Zimmer, Kenyon, Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America,books.google.com/books?id=AhIDCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA106, 2015, University of Illinois Press, 978-0-252-09743-0, 106, 131, 132,

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