Agnes E. Ryan

Agnes Edna Ryan (November 10, 1878 – 1954) was an American pacifist, vegetarian, suffragist and managing editor of Woman's Journal, 1910-1917.

Biography

Agnes Edna Ryan was born in Stuart, Iowa, to Edward and Mary A. Ryan. She had two siblings, John and Katherine Ryan.

Graduating from Boston University in 1903, Ryan went on to work for the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as a staff member of the Congregationalist and National magazines, as well as the Boston American. In 1910, she became managing editor of a suffrage publication, the Woman's Journal. In 1915, Agnes E. Ryan married Henry Bailey Stevens, who worked as the assistant editor for the Woman's Journal. She was a member of the Millennium Guild.

In Ryan's unpublished novel, "Who Can Fear Too Many Stars?," she depicts vegetarianism as a way of resisting male dominance.

Selected publications

The Torch Bearer. A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the Woman's Movement (1916) A Whisper of Fire (1919) For the Church Door (1943) A Ph.D. thesis, "Priestess of reform: The life of Agnes Ryan, 1878-1954," by Marcia Rollinson is housed at the University of New Hampshire.