Biography of the fascinating 19th century socialist, feminist theosophist Annie Besant

My awareness of Besant was of her later incarnation as a theosophist, and I never realised she had had such an extraordinarily brave earlier history as an outspoken feminist and, later, Fabian. She defended herself with incisive intelligence and oratorical skills, when she was brought to trial for publishing a book which taught women how to take control of their own fertility. She had left a disastrous marriage to a bullying clergyman, and was to lose custody of her daughter. She also supported Home Rule movements in Ireland and India.

Meyer’s book is lively and well written, and uses speeches and writing from court transcripts and journals. The only reason I have dropped a star is that the decision to contrast Besant’s important writing with the rather trivial journals of Queen Victoria’s daily doings, whilst stark and interesting enough initially, did drag a little.

The point was clearly made, showing which woman was the most radical, influential person in the cause of a fairer society and particularly in empowering women. The inevitable repetition of the dull by contrast over and again excerpts from the Queen’s journals dragged a little

I requested this book because Annie Besant was one of the founders of my old school in Colombo (Musaeus College)- I figured it had to be the same woman, there couldn't have been two Annie Besants who were active in women's rights and education at that time.

This book is fascinating. I had no idea quite how much Dr Besant did and how much it cost her in her personal life. It seems that there isn't an awful lot of original source material around about her early life - but the author uses a lot of background to fill in context instead.

An important book about an important figure all but forgotten about in history.

Huge thanks to net galley for my copy. 3.5/5

This is the most fascinating true story you’ve never heard of!

Petite, pious Annie Besant is a clergyman’s wife and mother of two in Victorian London. That is until her eyes are opened to the plight of women, the poor and Britain’s colonies.

The most interesting part of the book details Besant and close friend and “work husband” Charles Bradlaugh’s obscenity trial for publishing a pamphlet on contraception in the notoriously prudish - yet strangely fecund! - 1800s London. Besant defends herself with eloquence and skill in a time when women belonged either to their father or husband.

The book loses a little steam as she parts from Bradlaugh and becomes interested in a seemingly endless range of causes, but this pioneering feminist is a remarkable woman and Meyer vividly brings her world to life.

Before reading this book I'd never heard of Annie Beasant. This is an important piece of history about one woman's fight to publish information about contraception and a woman's rights over her own body. Impeccably researched abd written this us a simply brilliant book.

A great account of changing Britian in the 1870's,

Although this is the story of Annle Besant and her fight for womens rights and birth control, it runs along with a parallel of Queen Victorias storyline at the same time not in as great detail but it all and to what is a fascinating tale of the life of the 2 remarkable ladies. The times they lived in so very different to now the life of all females is hard to imagine now. They had rights but nowhere near anything acceptable. There is still a way to go but we have come a very long way since the 1870's

So why 5 stars it's the way the story is told the bravery of Annie is outstanding, its a true story so it's a tale of our history presented with passion and style that is worthy of the time yet without the stuffy suffocating others often use.

I enjoy this and can't but highly recommend it to you.

I found this to be an incredibly well researched and informative book. I enjoyed finding out about Annie Besant and what an incredible force she was.

A fascinating and informative book about an important woman in Brotish history who hS become obscured. Well written and researched. I particularly enjoyed the author's witty asides. Great title too!

A book with a difference. Annie Besant a name that I did not know until I read the book. A lady of the time, who really was the start of the women's right to contraception for todays age.

History abounds in this book and takes you at times on a dark journey of the time. Research that was done for this book is to acknowledged. Excellent piece of writing.

I loved the story of Annie Besant, and struggled to put this down. I had heard of her previously but really enjoyed learning about one of her many achievements in detail. It's such an important story, and gives us another person to thank for our current (threatened) freedoms, which are never given back without a fight.

Meyer gives just enough context for the development of the trial which forms the main focus of A Dirty, Filthy Book, such as who the main players were and what was happening in wider society at the time.

What a brave, heroic person and what a price she paid for it. How many people have heard of Annie Besant, I wonder?

I had not heard of Annie's story until I requested to read this book! Very interesting and inspiring to learn about her life and what she went through.

My thanks to Ebury for an advanced copy of this book for review. I lived for some years in Bow close to the Match Girls’ factory before gentrification and remember the old unofficial plaque commemorating the match girls’ strike and Annie Besant’s part in it.

For the most part, this book concentrates on the fallout from Besant’s decision with Charles Bradlaugh, repeatedly elected M.P. for Northampton and eventually admitted to the Commons as the first atheist MP, to publish Fruits of Philosophy, a birth control manual dealing with the practicalities of enabling a woman’s right to choose whether to become pregnant. They were prosecuted for obscenity in 1877. The author gives us a flavour of those very different times during the trial from newspapers of the day and Queen Victoria’s journals. 45 years before a woman was admitted to the bar, Besant defended herself. Her defence fund was supported by Garibaldi but not Charles Darwin. Nonetheless, she was good at the trial, she was good at public speaking and she had a printing press. There is a lot of information in this part of the book and it is worth a read.

Annie Besant’s life was full of talking, talkers and, in her own case, a good deal of action, mainly on other people’s struggles. After the trial and, to be fair, the enormous personal cost it exacted, she continued to campaign with Bradlaugh, but whereas he, a man from a working class background, eventually gained and was happy to accept establishment recognition, she, a woman from a substantial middle class background but estranged from her abusive vicar husband, met with obstruction and her role in events was consistently effaced.

She did, however, move on from Bradlaugh’s secular reformism to become progressively a Fabian, a socialist and a trade union activist mainly in the East End of London before, bizarrely, turning to theosophy and repudiating much of what she had stood for up until then. She encounters a range of well known figures on this journey and the book is lively and informative, if in need of a fair amount of editing. There are a lot of accidentally repeated parts of sentences and wherever a person’s age is mentioned, the text has withheld the number. Some of the metaphors work and some do not and the reader is jolted from time to time by the style of writing, which is not quite consistent in tone. It’s a readable book, though, on a neglected subject.

Besant’s 40 years in India are not covered in depth in this book. The author says he is not intending to write some sort of hagiography and he does mention that she adopted a child and promoted him as the son of god until the poor lad’s shortcomings became obvious even to her. As she had done all her life, however, she also continued to weigh in on other people’s liberation struggles and, as usual, felt no compunction about declaiming on other cultures through her didactic programmes. She was at one point President of the Indian Congress. It is reasonable to wonder in quite whose interest this was and indeed why she opened so many Freemason lodges all over the British Empire.

Altogether, then, hers is a strange if compelling story. I enjoyed reading about those parts of it brought to life by this author, not least because there are so few new books brought out about radical activists, however ambivalent I may feel about them.

What a woman and I had never heard of her until I saw this book. The writer tells the story very eloquently.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to find out about this incredible woman

This is an important and original book covering a previously ignored and forgotten but important piece of history. The trial of Annie Besant for the impertinence of publishing a book on female contraception. A subject that was taboo in Victorian England.

Impeccably researched and well written the amazing characters at the forefront of this case are brought to life and this is a fascinating read.