Ruth Bryan Owen

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Ruth Bryan Owen


RUTH BRYAN OWEN
Few American women have had such an interesting and brilliant career as has Ruth Bryan Owen, wife of Major Reginald Owen, of the British Army, and daughter of America's great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan.

Three years in the West Indies, three years in London, three years in Egypt, a trip around the world—these have been but incidents of a busy life touching intimately the peoples of many countries before, during and after the war period.

Inheriting from her distinguished father tireless energy and unusual observational acumen, Mrs. Owen has gathered out of her wide travel a vast fund of information.  Having, too, the oratorical prowess so richly inherent in the Bryan family, she knows how to impart that information to her hearers, in a manner at once pleasing and convincing.

Mrs. Owen's lecture experience does not begin with her overseas experience.  On the contrary she achieved, very early in life, as a lecturer for the Extension Department of the University of Nebraska, a distinct success on the platform.  This early training in the art of public speaking has been broadened by her larger experiences in later years, and she is today recognized as one of the most forceful and charming speakers of her sex in the world.




A Woman of Accomplishment
As a member of the Executive Committee of the American Woman's War Relief Fund, Mrs. Owen came into prominence as an executive.  This committee financed and operated a great hospital in Devonshire, which during the war cared for many thousands of wounded men.  Associated with her in this work were the Duchess of Marlborough, Lady Paget, Viscountess Harcourt and other leading women of the Empire.

Mrs. Owen was a co-secretary and treasurer with Mrs. Herbert Hoover on the Economic Relief Committee of the above fund, which conducted workrooms for unemployed women in different sections of London.  She was also secretary of the Woolwich Girls' Club—a much needed and appreciated institution—and was secretary of the Duchess of Marlborough's Maternity Hospital in London.

In Egypt, Mrs. Owen was a war nurse in the British Voluntary Aid Detachment, and was also in charge of organizations that gave entertainments for the men in hospitals and camps.  She was in Palestine when the Turks were driven back and General Allenby and his forces finally occupied the Holy City.

These are but representative activities that have been the lot of this talented woman whereever her travels have led her.




Mrs. Owen's Lectures
Mrs. Owen's lectures are unique.  That term has grown slightly bromidic, but no other word quite describes the charm of Mrs. Owen's work.

Her addresses never give the impression of a formal speech.  Rather, she seems to converse personally and informally with her hearers, and with such a gracious charm that she holds them in rapt attention.

Mrs. Owen inherited this delightful narrative style from her father.  She has observed widely and wisely throughout her unusual experiences, and with an insight and humor that makes her observations intensely human.  She has the happy faculty of making folks see with her, as she narrates them, the moving panorama of life that has passed before her, and her hearers follow her as she wills—one moment in rollicking laughter, the next in breathless interest.

In keeping with her wide experience in many lands she has a wide range of subjects, any one of which she clothes with intense interest.  For the present season she will speak on

Modern Arabian Knights
The Lure of Egypt
The Period of the Great Moguls


The genuine demand for her addresses, since Mrs. Owen returned to America a few months ago, indicates something of her popularity as a speaker.




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AFFILIATED LYCEUM & CHAUTAUQUA ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED
Serving the English-Speaking Peoples of the World
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Press comments from American and British newspapers on Mrs. Owen's work as a lecturer are so numerous as to preclude the possibility of their use in this connection.  They all emphasize the peculiar charm that makes the description unique, used above particularly pertinent.