Cirrus@Austlit

Editor's note: Dr Annie Besant, now visiting Australia and Sydney, is a remarkable woman who became famous in England more than forty years ago, when, after her marriage with the Rev Frank Besant, a Church of England clergyman, she renounced formal Christianity, and a little later associated herself with Charles Bradlaugh in the National Secular Society and in political work. Mrs Besant met Madame Blavatsky in 1889, studied Theosophy, and became head of the Theosophical Society, with headquarters in India. There she joined herself with the movement for Indian reform. Writing, lecturing, directing, and travelling, she has been one of the busiest and best-known women of the last generation - and still is hard at work.