The Project Gutenberg EBook of Annie Besant, by Annie Besant

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Title: Annie Besant
An Autobiography

Author: Annie Besant

Release Date: April 19, 2004 [EBook #12085]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: _From a photograph by H.S. Mendelssohn, 27, Cathcart
Road, South Kensington, London._ ANNIE BESANT. 1885]

ANNIE BESANT

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Illustrated

LONDON

SECOND EDITION

PREFACE.

It is a difficult thing to tell the story of a life, and yet more
difficult when that life is one's own. At the best, the telling has a
savour of vanity, and the only excuse for the proceeding is that the
life, being an average one, reflects many others, and in troublous
times like ours may give the experience of many rather than of one.
And so the autobiographer does his work because he thinks that, at the
cost of some unpleasantness to himself, he may throw light on some of
the typical problems that are vexing the souls of his contemporaries,
and perchance may stretch out a helping hand to some brother who is
struggling in the darkness, and so bring him cheer when despair has
him in its grip. Since all of us, men and women of this restless and
eager generation--surrounded by forces we dimly see but cannot as yet
understand, discontented with old ideas and half afraid of new, greedy
for the material results of the knowledge brought us by Science but
looking askance at her agnosticism as regards the soul, fearful of
superstition but still more fearful of atheism, turning from the husks
of outgrown creeds but filled with desperate hunger for spiritual
ideals--since all of us have the same anxieties, the same griefs, the
same yearning hopes, the same passionate desire for knowledge, it may
well be that the story of one may help all, and that the tale of one
should that went out alone into the darkness and on the other side
found light, that struggled through the Storm and on the other side
found Peace, may bring some ray of light and of peace into the
darkness and the storm