Mabel Collins

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Mabel Collins (born Minna Mabel Collins; 9 September 1851 – 31 March 1927) was a British writer, occultist and anti-vivisection campaigner who wrote more than 46 books. She was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey, the daughter of poet Mortimer Collins.

In 1871 she married Robert Keningale Cook, a stockbroker and writer who supported vegetarianism; he died in 1886. They had one child. Collins was an active anti-vivisectionist and chaired the Incorporated Parliamentary Association for the Abolition of Vivisection. She was also a vegetarian.

Collins joined the Theosophical Society in the 1880s and helped Helena Blavatsky edit Lucifer magazine. She left the society in 1889 over disagreements about teaching. Some biographers say she was expelled for flirting, but Collins denied this. After leaving, she became a critic of Theosophy and allied with Elliott Coues in opposing Blavatsky. Her best-known occult novels include The Idyll of the White Lotus (1884) and Light on the Path (1885). She insisted she wrote them herself, not by dictation from any “masters,” and she objected to Charles Leadbeater’s notes in the 1911 edition.

In the 1890s she used the name Mabel Cook and lived in London at 63 York Terrace with her child. In 1909 she co-wrote the political play Outlawed with Alice Chapin, a suffragette; it was produced at the Court Theatre in 1911. She began writing for The Occult Review in 1910 and later spoke of eczema and a nervous breakdown.

In 1915 she moved to live with her friend Catherine Metcalfe and wrote Our Glorious Future, staying with Metcalfe until her death in 1927. There are unverified stories that she met Robert Donston Stephenson and suspected he was Jack the Ripper, but these claims are not proven. Collins preferred to live alone or only with women after her husband’s death.