Tributes to Charles Sotheran

Laura C. Langford-Holloway, Boris de Zirkoff · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 9 pages

Nine pages by Laura C. Langford-Holloway and Boris de Zirkoff, from the bibliography in the Collected Writings volume I, pages 525 to 528, revised in February 2025. *The claim in the title is the reason to read it*: Sotheran is credited with originating the term by which the whole movement, and this website, is named.

Charles Sotheran — author, bibliographer and scholar — was born at Newington, Surrey, on 8 July 1847 and died in New York in 1902. He was the son of Charles and Frances Elise Sotheran and a relative of the famous London booksellers of the same name, which explains the trade he went into. Educated at private schools in England and at St Marie's College, Rugby, he married Mrs Alice Rhine in 1893. He came to the United States in 1874 — a year before the Society was founded — and began reportorial work on the New York World; he was literary editor of the New York Recorder and Star, editor of the short-lived New York Echo which he published for a time, and was connected with Sabin and Sons, booksellers in New York, editing their journal The American Bibliopolist. Later he was editorially connected with several other journals in America and Britain. The tribute describes him as a gentleman of broad culture and refinement, profound learning and noble character. His place in the movement's history is a founding one and rests on a single meeting: he was among those present at the gathering in New York in 1875 at which the new society needed a name, and it was he who proposed the word theosophy, found in the dictionary of the Neoplatonists, for it.

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