Owen Hall

Who was Owen Hall?

Owen Hall was the principal pen name of the Irish-born theatre writer, racing correspondent, theatre critic and solicitor, James "Jimmy" Davis, when writing for the stage. After his successive careers in law and journalism, Hall wrote the librettos for a series of extraordinarily successful musical comedies in the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s, including A Gaiety Girl, An Artist's Model, The Geisha, A Greek Slave and Florodora. Despite his achievements, Hall was constantly in financial distress because of his gambling and extravagant lifestyle; his pseudonym was a pun on "owing all".