Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction: Annie Besant’s First Foray into Self-Writing Annie Besant: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text
Autobiographical Sketches (1885)
Appendix A: Publication of Autobiographical Sketches (1884-85) and Aftermath
- Reviews of Autobiographical Sketches
- Unsigned review, “Contemporary Literature: History and Biography,” The Westminster Review (July 1886)
- G.W. Foote, “The Latest Apostle of Socialism,” Progress: A Monthly Magazine of Advanced Thought; Annie Besant, Rejoinder”; and Foote, “Reply to Mrs. Besant’s Rejoinder” (1886)
- “Foreword” of W.T. Stead, “Mrs. Annie Besant,” The Review of Reviews (October 1891)
- From Annie Besant, Why I Don’t Believe in God (1887)
- From Annie Besant, Why I Became a Theosophist (1889)
- From Annie Besant, 1875 to 1891: A Fragment of Autobiography (1891)
Appendix B: Publication of An Autobiography (1893) and Critical Response
- “Preface” to An Autobiography (1893)
- Selected parallel passages and entries from new sections
- Parallel passages (to Autobiographical Sketches)
- Entries from new sections in An Autobiography
- Reviews of An Autobiography
- Unsigned review, “Mrs. Besant’s Apologia,” The Westminster Budget (December 1893)
- “Calcar,” “Mrs. ‘Annie’ Besant’s Apology,” Vanity Fair (December 1893)
- Unsigned review, “Annie Besant,” Pall Mall Gazette (December 1893)
- Unsigned review, “Recent Biography,” The Athenaeum (February 1894)
- Review essay by W.E. Gladstone, Annie Besant’s reply, and letter from Gladstone to Digby Besant
- From Gladstone, “True and False Conceptions of the Atonement,” The Nineteenth Century (September 1894)
- From Annie Besant’s reply, The Nineteenth Century (June 1895)
- Letter from Gladstone to Digby Besant (October 1894)
Appendix C: Contemporary Issues
- Charles Knowlton, “Philosophical Proem,” The Fruits of Philosophy: An Essay on the Population Question (1832; rev. ed. 1877)
- From The Married Women’s Property Acts (1870; 1882) and Amendment Acts (1874; 1893)
- An Act to amend the Law relating to the Property of Married Women (1870)
- An Act to amend the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 (1874)
- An Act to consolidate and amend the Married Women’s Property Act (1882)
- An Act to amend the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 (1893)
- Socialism: For and Against, A Written Debate between Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, Our Corner (1887)
- Charles Bradlaugh, “Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers” (March 1887)
- Annie Besant, “Socialism: Its Truths and Its Hopes” (April 1887)
- Sidney and Beatrice Webb, “Preface,” The History of Trade Unionism (1894)
Appendix D: Concurrent Issues as Seen by Annie Besant
- Annie Besant, The Political Status of Women (1874)
- From The Secular Song and Hymn Book (1875) and from “Two Secular Burial Services” (1875)
- Annie Besant, “Preface,” The Secular Song and Hymn Book
- Lyrics attributed to Besant in The Secular Song and Hymn Book
- Annie Besant, “Burial Service”
- Annie Besant, “Landlords,Tenant Farmers, and Laborers,” National Reformer (1877)
- From Annie Besant, The Law of Population (1877) and Theosophy and the Law of Population (1896)
- Annie Besant, “Chapter I: The Law of Population,” The Law of Population
- Annie Besant, from the final two paragraphs of Theosophy and the Law of Population
Select Bibliography