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Annie Besant
‐
Feminist, politician and leading member of the Theosophical Society
Place of birth
Place of death
Adyar, India
About
Annie Besant was a leading member of the Theosophical Society, a feminist and political activist, and a politician in India. She had a close relationship with Charles Bradlaugh, MP, a free-thinker who was often known as the 'Member for India'. Having declared herself an atheist, Annie Besant was drawn to other ideas of spiritualism and joined the Theosophical Society in 1889. She was very close to the co-founder, Madame Blavatsky, and allowed Blavatsky to live in her house in St John's Wood from 1889. In 1907, after the death of Colonel Olcott, Besant was made President of the Theosophical Society.
In 1911 Besant brought Jiddu Krishnamurti and his brother to England and acted as their guardian. She proclaimed in 1927 that Krishnamurti was the 'coming' (i.e., messiah) and was devastated when he left the Theosophical Society in 1929.
Besant also campaigned for the rights of Indians and for Indian 'home rule'. She launched the Home Rule League in 1916, modelling the Indian plight on that of Ireland. She was a member of the Fabian Society, owing to her close relationship with George Bernard Shaw. In 1917 she became the first woman President of the Indian National Congress at a session in Calcutta.
George Arundale, H. P. Blavatsky, Charles Bradlaugh, Esther Bright, Mohini Chatterjee, M. K. Gandhi, C. Jinarajadasa, Jiddu Krishnamurti, C. W. Leadbeater, Emily Lutyens, Jiddu Nityananda, Colonel Olcott, A. P. Sinnett.
Why I Became a Theosophist (London: Freethought Publishing, 1889)
An Autobiography (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893)
The Bhagavad Gita (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1895)
The Case for India [Congress Presidential Address, December 1917] (London: Home Rule for India League, 1918)
Bright, Esther, Old Memories and Letters of Annie Besant (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1936)
Broughton, T. L., 'Women's Autobiography: The Self at Stake?', Prose Studies 14 (September 1991), pp. 76–94
Nethercott, Arthur, The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963)
Taylor, Anne, 'Besant, Annie (1847–1933)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30735]
Letters to Annie Besant, 1914–1926, Mss Eur C888, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
College of Psychic Studies, South Kensington
Theosophical Society Archives, Adyar, India
Theosophical Society in England, London
Women's Library, London School of Economics, London
Image credit
Annie Besant, 1885. Photograph by H. S. Mendelssohn, 362.924 BES, The Women's Library, LSE Library
No known copyright restrictions, https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22598517530
