Who was annie besant biography

In an effort to unearth kindred spirits and alleviate her own loneliness, she joined the Liberal Social Union and quickly developed a taste for lecturing after speaking out at several meetings.

Who was annie besant biography

By the time she made her formal debut on the lucrative lecture circuit in late AugustBesant's ongoing religious doubts had transformed her into an atheist and led her to join the National Secular Society. The success of her first public lecture brought her to the attention of the Society's president and founder, Charles Bradlaughwho subsequently offered her a steady job as a writer and assistant editor of the National Reformer.

From the beginning, her weekly articles which mocked opponents of Freethought, advocated social reform, women's suffrage and called for an end to imperialism around the world appeared under the pseudonym Ajax to spare Scott, for whom she also still wrote, a potentially embarrassing connection to the often controversial National Reformer and its parent organization.

Besant's efforts at anonymity did not, however, last. At her second appearance, which dealt with the plight of women and their demand for suffrage, her identity as Ajax was revealed. Although this fact was suppressed in the many reviews of her lecture, Scott was forced to publish Besant's next piece anonymously lest he risk permanent damage to his business prospects.

Their working relationship received another serious jolt in the summer of when a member of the audience interrupted one of Besant's lectures to accuse her of supporting promiscuity and free love. While nothing could have been further from the truth, Besant's decision not to defend herself publicly damaged her reputation and caused her estranged husband to attempt to regain custody of Mabel.

His efforts were only foiled through Bradlaugh's timely intervention and repeated threats of legal action. In the meantime, Besant rose rapidly within the National Secular Society due to her eloquence and the vehemence of her attacks on the society's opponents. A scant year after joining the organization, she had become vice president and had emerged as one of its more vocal and influential members.

In the spring ofBesant moved into a house in St. John's Wood and began circulating the so-called "monster petition," demanding an end to parliamentary grants to the royal family. After presenting the petition to Parliament, which chose to ignore it, Besant began writing more and more articles in the National Reformer calling for widespread political and social reform.

Her growing public radicalism led Besant into deep trouble. When Charles Watts, a Bristol book merchant, was indicted under Victorian Britain's obscenity laws for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophywhich both described and promoted various methods of birth control, Besant reviewed the book and insisted that it was defensible on medical grounds.

Desperate to avoid a jail sentence, Watts pled guilty, much to Besant's disgust. Convinced that Watts' plea was a victory for censorship, in early Besant and Bradlaugh decided to challenge the basis of the Obscene Publications Act. In order to provoke a test case, they established the Freethought Publishing Company and brought out a new version of Fruits of Philosophy.

Within weeks, both had been arrested and began defending themselves in a highly publicized trial which aroused enormous public interest due to both the subject matter and Besant's own spirited testimony. Despite an eloquent defense, both defendants were found guilty and sentenced to a fine and six months imprisonment. Freed on appeal, Besant began to publicly advocate the use of birth control.

Her ideas were presented in the Law of Population which was first serialized in the National Reformer and then issued separately as an enormously popular pamphlet. By August ofBesant found herself in enormous demand on the lecture circuit due to the trial's publicity. As her influence grew, along with the size of her audience, she began to speak more often about peace, anti-imperialism, and the need for social justice.

In January of the following year, the Court of Errors, after finally hearing their appeal, dismissed the case against both Besant and Bradlaugh on a technicality. Unfortunately, her good fortune ended here. Frank, incensed at his estranged wife's actions and association of his family name with atheism and birth whom were annie besant biography, formally sued to regain custody of Mabel.

When Besant's brother declined to appear in court on her behalf, as he had done during her earlier legal battles with Frank, Bradlaugh offered to take over. His decision to use the custody hearings as a new forum in which to advocate Freethought ideology proved to be disastrous and caused Besant to lose her case. Subsequent appeals for Mabel's return and a new bid for a divorce also failed and led to increasingly restrictive visitation rights which Besant eventually decided to forego entirely in the hope that her children would seek her out on their own when they legally came of age.

Infuriated by these setbacks, she vowed to overcome the system and earn a law degree so that she might be better prepared for any future legal battles. To this end, she matriculated at London University ina scant year after the institution opened its doors to women. In order to pass the entrance exam required of all new students, Besant had turned to a fellow Freethinker, Edward Bibbins Aveling, to tutor her in science.

As a result of these sessions, Besant abandoned law in favor of biology and earned a first-class degree the following year despite massive resistance and prejudice from within the male-dominated university community. Determined to pass on what she had learned, Besant began teaching courses of her own in the National Secular Society's Hall of Science.

Although busy with teaching duties and her own studies, Besant still found time to lecture and write in support of social and political re-form. At an open meeting in early February ofshe formally called for an end to primogeniture, advocated state seizure of land not in use for cultivation, and demanded immediate re-form of the tax code in an effort to improve the plight of urban and rural laborers.

The popularity of this platform led Besant to create the Land Leaguewith help from both Aveling and Bradlaugh, and paved the way for the latter's whom were annie besant biography successful campaign for election to Parliament. As an atheist, however, many felt that Bradlaugh's oath of allegiance to the Crown, something required of all MPs, was meaningless.

When his opponents seized upon the issue and used it to deprive him of his seat, Besant began campaigning tirelessly on Bradlaugh's behalf. These efforts were to occupy the bulk of her time for the next four years. With Bradlaugh diverted by the effort to take up his parliamentary duties, the National Secular Society began to fall into disarray. When Aveling joined socialists, a group which Bradlaugh had long opposed, and began a long-term romantic attachment with Eleanor Marx-Avelinghe was expelled from the Society in disgrace.

Deprived of her two mentors and colleagues, Besant began evolving her own political philosophy. Her ideas first appeared in in a series of Autobiographical Sketches which she published in her own newly founded journal entitled Our Corner. The next phase of Besant's political evolution came when she met and befriended George Bernard Shaw after he began submitting pieces for whom were annie besant biography in Our Corner.

Shaw soon led Besant to embrace socialism and supported her June application for membership in the newly founded Fabian Societya group of intellectuals who called for the gradual reform of British society by freeing land and capital from individual ownership. By March ofBesant had been elected to the Fabian's executive committee and began leading many of the Society's subsequent reform campaigns.

This growing public commitment to socialism finally estranged her from Bradlaugh and led to her resignation as co-editor of the National Reformer. Freed of her editing responsibilities, she turned her full attention to the plight of the working class. When a series of increasingly militant demonstrations by unemployed workers in the fall of resulted in mass arrests, Besant led the Fabians in arranging bail, organizing jail visits, and speaking out in support of the arrested workers.

In the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday riots, which subsequently erupted in mid-November after the government tried to ban a planned mass meeting in Trafalgar Square, Besant's efforts on behalf of workers increased. Along with the journalist W. Stead, she created the Law and Liberty League and founded a new journal, Linkboth of which were dedicated to reform efforts aimed at improving the lot of Britain's working classes.

After helping the women to unionize and win concessions from their employers, Besant was elected secretary of the union and was sent as one of its delegates to the International Trades Union Congress. After Krishnamurti distanced himself from her messianic plans inthe Theosophical Society gave up messianism while maintaining its progressive millennial orientation, although many individual Theosophists remained intensely interested in Krishnamurti's teachings.

Annie Besant's hope for a New Civilization accomplished by a critical mass of people developing a consciousness of spiritual unity under the guidance and influence of Masters, and including the possible return of the Christ, continues to influence the New Age movementespecially through the writings of Alice Bailey, a former member of the Theosophical Society.

Blavatsky, H. Anderson, Nancy Fix. Describes Besant's impact on the Indian Home Rule movement. Besant, Annie. Autobiographical Sketches. London, Initial autobiographical account written prior to becoming a Theosophist. Annie Besant: An Autobiography. Revision of Autobiographical Sketches after her conversion to Theosophy. Jayakar, Pupul.

Krishnamurti: A Biography. San Francisco The first biography of Krishnamurti that revealed he thought of himself as the World-Teacher until the end of his life. Nethercot, Arthur H. Chicago, These two books by Nethercot remain the most thoroughly researched biographical treatments. Sloss, Radha Rajagopal. Lives in the Shadow with J Krishnamurti.

An eye-opening biography of Krishnamurti. Wessinger, Catherine Lowman. Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism. Lewiston, N. An intellectual biography of Besant that traces her evolving millennialism. Short description of Besant's progressive millennialism and her influence on the New Age movement. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

Wessinger, Catherine " Besant, Annie. Wessinger, Catherine "Besant, Annie. January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.

Prominent Theosophist and successor to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as the international leader of the Theosophical movement. She was raised by a widowed mother in a very religious environment and in married Frank Besant, a Church of England minister. However, when she became increasingly skeptical of Christian teachings and refused to silence her doubts, the marriage ended in separation and divorce In she met atheist and freethinker Charles Bradlaughleader of the National Secular Society, became friends with him, joined the society, began to write for the National Reformer, and was elected vice-president of the society in Her first public lecture concerned the political rights of women.

In she and Bradlaugh formed a partnership, the Freethought Publishing Company, and Besant became coeditor of the National Reformer. Pursuing her feminist agenda, Besant led in the publication of Charles Knowlton's The Fruits of Philosophy, an early text advocating birth control. In she and Bradlaugh were arrested on charges of publishing obscene literature, and in a sensational trial, which became a forum for both to present their opinions to the public, they were convicted of intending to corrupt morals the conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

The trial established Besant's reputation as one of England's finest orators, an atheist, and advocate for women's rights. In the s she was drawn into the circle of George Bernard Shaw 's associates. Besant became a socialist, which led to her break with Bradlaugh, and in she resigned as coeditor of the National Reformer. She joined Shaw's Fabian Society.

Meanwhile, she championed the strike of the underpaid matchgirls in and became the first woman to be accepted at the University of London. In she was given a copy of The Secret Doctrine for review. The event proved life-changing. She found the answers that had eluded her in Christianity and in freethought. She soon became a close associate of Blavatsky, joined the editorial staff of the Theosophical Society 's magazine, Lucifer, and turned her oratorical skills to defend her new mentor and promote Theosophy.

In she made her first trip to the United States to revive the society badly shaken by the scandal that followed when Richard Hodgson of the American Society for Psychical Research accused Blavatsky of fraud. After Blavatsky's death inBesant headed the Esoteric Section, the group of Blavatsky's personal occult students. Social and political reform seems not to have satisfied Besant's hunger for some all-embracing truth to replace the religion of her youth.

She became interested in Theosophy, a religious movement founded in and based on Hindu ideas of karma and reincarnation. As a member and later leader of the Theosophical Society, Besant helped to spread Theosophical beliefs around the world, notably in India. Besant first visited India in and later settled there, becoming involved in the Indian nationalist movement.

In she established the Indian Home Rule League, of which she became president. She was also a leading member of the Indian National Congress. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in IAS - Your dream can come true! Download Now. Watch Now. Bal Gangadhar Tilak []. Lala Lajpat Rai. Bhagat Singh. UPSC Calendar