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. He attended school in England, and studied law in London. Upon completion, he moved to the United States in 1884, whereupon he settled and taught in California, among other jobs. 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. Owen became an activist for anarchist, labor, and prison reform in southern California. He worked as a court reporter and wrote the 1910
Crime and Criminals against the American jails. 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. Owen wrote about the Mexican Revolution for other English-language anarchist journals and published both a pamphlet,
The Mexican Revolution (1912), and a newspaper,
Land and Liberty (1914–1915). ("
Tierra y Libertad" was a slogan of the Magón
Mexican Liberal Party.) Owen fought Magón's arrest from 1912 to 1914, but was himself included in a 1916 warrant. With advance notice 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, of which he later became an editor. Owen died in
Worthing, England, on June 9, 1929. == Works ==