Annie Besant | Annie Besant

At a glance:

Author: Anne Taylor
First Published: 1992
Type of Work: Biography
Time of Work: 1847-1933
Setting: England and India
Principal Characters: Annie Besant, Ellen Marryat, Frank Besant, Charles Bradlaugh, Madame Helene Petrovna Blavatsky
Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
Subjects: Socialism, England or English people, Women’s issues, India or East Indian people, Secularism, Atheism, Victorian era or Victorianism, Celibacy, Activism, Theosophy
Locales: England, India

The course Annie Besant’s extraordinary life would take, Anne Taylor suggests, was determined on the day her father died, in London, in 1852. Her mother moved the family to genteel Harrow, where boys from the famous school lodged in the house. Here, a desire for the male world of learning they could enter rubbed off on Annie. At the age of eight, her education was entrusted to a stranger, Ellen Marryat, a brilliant woman of independent means attracted by Annie’s potential.

Taylor rightly stresses the importance of Marryat in shaping Annie’s life. She developed in Annie...

Annie Besant | Annie Besant

At a glance:

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