Archival collections

UNDER CONSTRUCTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This article identifies archival repositories and collections on Theosophy, the Theosophical Movement, and related topics.

Theosophical organizations with archives

• Theosophical Society based in Adyar, Chennai, India holds correspondence, scrapbooks, and notebooks of H. P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and other Society leaders. Located in a modern facility behind the Adyar Library and Research Centre, the department has been named the Surendra Narayan Archives. Contact at mailto:adyararchives@gmail.com.
• Theosophical Society in America located in Wheaton, Illinois has an Archives Department that maintains the organizational records of the TSA and special collections from Boris de Zirkoff, Walter A. Carrithers, Jr., and others. Contact at mailto:archives@theosophical.org.

Academic institutions

• Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois – McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives
  • Arthur H. Nethercot (1895-1981) Papers, Collection Identifier: 11/3/11/8. The biographer of Annie Besant was an NU professor, and his papers retain a small amount of material about her.
• University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois – The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library.
  • Helen I. Dennis Collection on the Theosophical Society 1897-1943. Helen Dennis, a Chicago Theosophist and E.S. secretary, was a major figure in the 1906-1907 controversy surrounding Charles Webster Leadbeater. This collection has three boxes of correspondence and other papers mostly focused on Leadbeater.
• University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California – Special Research Collections
  • American Religions Collection. Collection Number: ARC Mss 1. Papers of J. Gordon Melton, American religious scholar, author, and encyclopedia editor. Several boxes of unsorted materials from many branches of the Theosophical Movement.
• Lomaland Theosophy Collection, Humanities Hub. This collection interfaces with the Kenneth R. Small Lomaland archival collection held in the Department of Special Collections at the San Diego State University Library. The Lomaland collection contains books and periodicals from the Lomaland Theosophy Community in Point Loma, San Diego (1897-1942). The Lomaland Community, founded by Katherine Tingley, was known for its emphasis on the creative arts and education, with its Raja Yoga School its central focus. This growing collection contains a broad range of books and periodicals from Theosophy and writings from the Perennial Wisdom Traditions. Also incorporated are the writings of its key figures, Katherine Tingley and G. de Purucker, and central Lomaland authors Kenneth Morris, Talbot Mundy, Osvald Siren, William E. Gates, and W. Y. Evans-Wentz. >> LIST SUB-COLLECTIONS

Private archives and historical societies

• Kauai Museum, Lihue, Hawai'i
  • Augustus Knudsen Archive. Photos of Augustus Francis Knudsen have been uploaded into Wikimedia Commons.

Other links

• Online Archive of California lists 39 collections in California that touch upon Theosophy.