author
J. A. (Jean Allan) Owen
1841–1922
A prolific Victorian-era nature writer and traveler, she published books on birds, the countryside, Cornwall, Hawaii, and more. Writing as J. A. Owen and later also as Mrs. Visger, she brought close observation and first-hand experience to a wide range of subjects.
1 Audiobook
Birds useful and birds harmful
by Ottó Herman, J. A. (Jean Allan) Owen
About the author
Born in 1841 and dying in 1922, Jean Allan Owen is also recorded as Jean Allen Pinder Owen Visger. She published under the name J. A. Owen, and sources connect her with the later name Mrs. Visger as well.
Her books suggest an unusually wide field of interest. She wrote and edited works on natural history and country life, including The Country Month by Month, and she is credited with titles such as Sea Blossom: A Cornish Story and The Story of Hawaii. A contemporary notice in Nature also describes her as someone who had lived in New Zealand for several years and had visited Tahiti and the Hawaiian Islands, which helps explain the lived experience behind some of her travel writing.
Owen seems to have been one of those energetic late-19th-century authors who could move easily between fiction, popular nature writing, editing, and travel narrative. Even where the surviving record is scattered, the picture that emerges is of a versatile writer with a strong eye for the natural world and a gift for making distant places feel immediate to readers.