OLD DIARY LEAVES

INTRODUCTION

THE Diary from which the present series of chapters
has been compiled was opened in January, 1878,
three years after the formation of the Theosophical
Society at New York, by the late Madame Blavatsky
myself, and a few others, and has been systematically
kept up ever since. Under the title, " Old
Diary Leaves: The True History of the Theosophical
Society," a volume, with illustrations, was
published in the year 1895, by Messrs. G. P. Putnam
& Sons (London and New York), which has had a
wide circulation. It covered the period from the
first meeting of my great colleague and myself in
the year 1874, down to the sailing of our party from
New York for Bombay in December, 1878. The
thread of our narrative, now taken up, leads us
from that point onward to the autumn of 1883,
embracing the novel and exciting incidents of the
establishment of our movement in India and Ceylon
from which such momentous results have followed.

No important event has been omitted, no falsification
of the record resorted to. Other volumes will
be issued from time to time should there be a...