BESANT, ANNIE (1847-1933), British theosophist, was born in London, Oct. 1, 1847, the daughter of William Page Wood. She married, in 1867, the Rev. Frank Besant (d. 1917), after wards vicar of Sibsey, Lincs., but obtained a separation from her husband in 1873. She had become an ardent Freethinker, and from 1874 to 1888 she worked in close association with Charles Bradlaugh, both in politics and in freethought propaganda, as a lecturer and a writer of pamphlets over the signature of "Ajax." Her increasing tendency towards Socialism of the more revolu tionary type occasioned a divergence between them after 1885, which was completed in 1889 by her adhesion to the Theosophical Society. She became a devoted pupil of Mme. Blavatsky, and threw in her lot very largely with India. She founded the Central Hindu college at Benares, and was elected president of the Theo sophical Society in '907; she established the Indian Home Rule League and became its president in 1916, and in 1917 she was president of the Indian National Congress, but later dissociated herself from the extreme wing of the Nationalist Party. For a short time in 1917 she was interned at a hill station by Lord Pentland. While the Montague reforms were in preparation Mrs. Besant at first supported the Government, but, after a brief spell of constitutionalism, she again advocated with astounding energy the extreme nationalist position. Meanwhile the strange episode of her protégé, J. Krishnamurti, who was to be the new world teacher, had begun in 1910, and the new Order of the Star was founded. In 1926-27 Mrs. Besant travelled widely in England and America with Krishnamurti, as the new Messiah, urging his claims much more vehemently than he wished. Returning to India she was involved in a lawsuit with the father of the boy, and she withdrew much of what she had said. Her gifts of oratory and organization had carried her to the position, unique for an Englishwoman, of leader in a Hindu political movement. In addi tion to her numerous freethought pamphlets and works on the osophy, she published an Autobiography (1893), and The Reli gious Problem in India (1902). She died Sept. 20, 1933.