Occult World

C. W. Leadbeater writes about the effect these two books had:

‘In 1881 Mr Sinnett startled the literary circles of London by the publication of The Occult World. Here was a book by a man whose position vouched for him — a book short, definite and to the point.

True, it told an astounding story — a story to the ordinary man of the world all but incredible, though strangely attractive; but it told it in the most straightforward and transparently truthful manner, so that to many of us in spite of its overwhelming novelty it carried conviction upon its very face. I had at one time in those early days the privilege of assisting Mr Sinnett in answering some of the enormous mass of correspondence which descended upon him from all parts of the civilized world in consequence of those books.

The name of Alfred Percy Sinnett will ever be honoured in the annals of Theosophy. He, along with Mme H. P. Blavatsky and Col. Olcott, bore the brunt of the opposition which was inevitable when Theosophy was first expounded in the nineteenth century.