Agnes Edna Ryan | |
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| Born | November 10, 1878[1] |
| Died | 1954 |
| Occupation(s) | Activist, editor |
Agnes Edna Ryan (November 10, 1878 – 1954) was an Americanpacifist,vegetarian, suffragist and managing editor ofWoman's Journal, 1910-1917.[2][3]
Agnes Edna Ryan was born in Stuart, Iowa, to Edward and Mary A. Ryan. She had two siblings, John and Katherine Ryan.[4]
Graduating from Boston University in 1903, Ryan went on to work for the Riverside Press inCambridge, Massachusetts, and as a staff member of theCongregationalist andNational magazines, as well as theBoston American. In 1910, she became managing editor of a suffrage publication, theWoman's Journal. In 1915, Agnes E. Ryan marriedHenry Bailey Stevens, who worked as the assistant editor for theWoman's Journal.[4] In order to keep her last name, she went to court and successfully challenged the law that required women to take their husband's last name. The couple adopted two children, Peter and Patricia.[4]
In 1917, Ryan and Stevens resigned from theWoman's Journal in part because of their opposition toWorld War I.[4] In 1918, when Henry accepted a job in Durham, N.H., as the director of theAgricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service at the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, later theUniversity of New Hampshire, Agnes followed, organizing the New Hampshire Peace Union, writing poetry, becoming active in the MacDowell Colony ofPeterborough, New Hampshire,[4] and serving as a speaker for theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Ryan was among the feminist vegetarians who, duringWorld War I, made a connection between meat eating and the killing of human beings in the Great War.[5]: 123
In Ryan's unpublished novel, "Who Can Fear Too Many Stars?," she depicts vegetarianism as a way of resisting male dominance.[5]: 132
Ryan's papers are archived at theArthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America,Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,Harvard University, and include unpublished novels, diaries, correspondences, an autobiography, and other writings.[2]
Carol J. Adams argues that Ryan's "the Cancer Bogy" was perhaps the first modern vegetarian health guide.[5]: 149
Josephine Donovan mentions that Ryan is one of the manyfirst-wave feminists who advocated foranimal rights.[6]: 359
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