Author: Annie Besant
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 332
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143033409
Description
Annie Besant was born in 1847. Married at the age of nineteen to Rev Frank Besant and a mother of two by the time she was twenty-three, Annie was nonetheless an independent spirit. She would often question the religion she and her family practiced, earning the displeasure of her more traditional husband.
When Annie refused to attend communion, he ordered her to leave the family home. Rejecting Christianity, she went to live in London where she joined the Secular Society and also learned about Theosophy, a modern re-statement of an ancient spiritual wisdom found at the heart of the religions of the world. During these years she wrote many articles on issues such as marriage and women’s rights and health, even publishing her controversial book, The Laws of Population, advocating birth control.
In the 1890s Annie Besant became a member of The Theosophical Society, founded by Madame Blavatsky and Col H S Olcott in 1875, and came to live in India in 1893. At the forefront of the movement for India’s cultural and spiritual resurgence, she started the Indian Home Rule movement and became President of the Indian National Congress in 1907. The same year, she was elected President of The Theosophical Society, a position she held till her death in 1933.
Outstanding orator, reformer, humanist and educationist, Annie Besant inspired and continues to inspire thousands of men and women all over the world.
Contents
PREFACE TO THIRD IMPRESSION
PREFACE
CHAPTER
Out of the Everywhere into the Here
Early Childhood
Girlhood
Marriage
The Storm of doubt
Charles Bradlaugh
Atheism as I knew and Taught It
At Work
The Knowlton Pamphlet
At War All Round
Mr Bradlaugh’s Struggle
Still Fighring
Socialism
Through Storm to Peace