Annie Wood Besant

Autobiographical Sketches (Dodo Press) Annie Wood Besant

Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933) was a prominent Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator. She was born in 1847 in London into a middle-class family of Irish origin. She fought for the causes she thought were right, starting with freedom of thought, women's rights, secularism (she was a leading member of the National Secular Society), birth control, Fabian socialism and workers' rights. Soon she was earning a small weekly wage by writing a column for the National Reformer, the newspaper of the National Secular Society. She was one of the leading figures in Theosophy. Soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society she went to India for the first time (in 1893). She devoted much of her energy not only to the Society, but also to India's freedom and progress.