1-153-019 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

Annie Besant (nee Wood) (1847-1933), British socialist and theosophist, 1890. An active campaigner for women's and workers' rights, Annie Besant was a powerful public speaker and a prolific writer. She was converted to theosophy, which holds that all religions are an attempt by man to ascertain 'the Divine', in 1889 after reading The Secret Doctrine by HP Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society. Besant attempted to understand the universe through clairvoyance.