ABSTRACT
Annie Besant (1847-1933) was born in London, the only daughter of William Wood and Emily Roche Morris, who also had two sons, Henry and Alfred. Her father, who had trained as a medical student at Trinity College, Dublin, subsequently became a businessman. Educated privately by Ellen Marryat, an Evangelical sister of the novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, she made a disastrous marriage to a clergyman, Frank Besant, in 1867, from whom she was legally separated in 1873, having had two children, Digby and Mabel. Besant was involved for much of her life in controversial social campaigns, such as that for birth control. She worked closely with Charles Bradlaugh, who was denied his seat in Parliament because he was an atheist; together, they were prosecuted for publishing Charles Knowlton's The Fruits of Philosophy (1875), a birth-control manual, and she lost custody of her daughter. Organizer of the London matchgirls' strike at Bryant and May's in 1888, Besant converted to Theosophy after reading Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine in 1889. She became International President of the Theosophical Society in 1907. Finally, she converted to Hinduism on believing that she had been an Indian in most of her previous incarnations. The final phase of her active political life was with the Indian nationalist movement, culminating in her election as President of the Indian National Congress.
Besant's Autobiography, from which the following extract is taken, was published in 1893.
