H. P. Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) was born into the Russian nobility in Yekaterinoslav, left a brief marriage at eighteen, and spent two decades traveling, by her own account through Egypt, India and Tibet, before arriving in New York in 1873. There, with Henry Steel Olcott, she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, a movement that sought an ancient wisdom underlying all religions and did much to introduce Hindu and Buddhist ideas to the West. Her major books are Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine and The Key to Theosophy. Controversial in her lifetime, accused of fraud by the Society for Psychical Research and defended by devoted followers, she died in London.