The Nine Lives of Annie Besant The Astonishing Story of a Victorian Rebel

On Thursday, 5 April 1877, police charged 30-year-old Annie Besant and her colleague Charles Bradlaugh with breaching the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The reason was the scandalous sale of a slim book called The Fruits of Philosophy. If the fictional Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the subject of the case in 1960 which horrified and delighted in equal measure, this was the non-fiction equivalent nearly a century earlier. The publication of this birth control guide, which the prosecutor in the trial referred to as a ‘filthy, dirty book’ caused a sensation and made Annie famous.

But Annie’s extraordinary life, with its massive loyal following and significant influence, stretched long before and way beyond this, from the Western to the Eastern hemispheres, from the secular to the occult, and from the world of Victorian Britain to modernity and the First World War.

In a police report commissioned by the government on the dangers posed by Annie towards the end of her life, the investigator commented that ‘the perpetual struggle of the violent reformer against constitutional authority continued.’ She was recognized then, and should be now, as a formidable and fearless fighter.

Annie’s life has been cherry picked by historians, partly because the stories are rich and engaging but also to avoid the awkwardness of her theosophical incarnation. In The Nine Lives of Annie Besant, Clare Paterson charts the extraordinary – and largely untold – story of this pioneering Victorian feminist.