Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Annie (Wood) Besant, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2502 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
Sometimes my lecturing experiences were not of the smoothest. In June, 1875, I visited Darwen in Lancashire, and found that stone-throwing was considered a fair argument to be addressed to "the Atheist lecturer". On my last visit to that place in May, 1884, large and enthusiastic audiences attended the lectures, and not a sign of hostility was to be seen outside the hall. At Swansea, in March, 1876, the fear of violence was so great that no local friend had the courage to take the chair for me (a guarantee against damage to the hall had been exacted by the proprietor). ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
In her long life, Annie Besant embraced political, religious, and social causes with equal conviction and sincerity, courting ridicule and controversy by actively promoting unpopular ideas.At 26 she fled the shelter of marriage to an Anglican clergyman and renounced her religious upbringing
by joining the National Secular Society.Under the influence of its president, Charles Bradlaugh, she wrote and lectured for the cause of Freethought, and in 1876, achieved nationwide fame by defending birth control in a public court.She converted to socialism and through her friendship with
Bernard Shaw joined the Fabian Society.In 1888 Besant played a leading role in the Bryant and May match girls' strike and became Secretary of the trade union they founded.But by 1891 she had fallen out of sympathy with socialists and turned instead to Theosophy and its eccentric prophet, Madame
Blavatsky.Thereafter she divided her life between England and the Theosophical Society's headquarters in India.She joined the Indian National Congress and was interned in 1917 for her passionate advocacy of Home Rule. In this, the first full-length biography of Annie Besant in thirty years,
Taylor draws on previously unpublished letters to show that Besant was in love, not with Shaw, but with journalist W. Stead who rejected her advances.The book reveals for the first time the full extent of the Government of India's alarm at Besant's commanding position in the crisis of 1917, and
her bid for political and religious power in India. ... Read more