num_pages: 248
description: George Robert Stowe Mead (1863-1933) was a major translator editor and commentator on Gnostic and hermetic literature and thus a pivotal figure linking the late 19th-century esoteric revival to 20th-century art literature and psychology. As a young convert to the new movement of theosophy he served as private secretary to its co-founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and after founding the European section of the Theosophical Society edited its London journal Lucifer for many years. Mead's initial interest in theosophy and Hinduism soon blossomed into a lifelong and wide-ranging engagement with the texts of Gnosticism neo-Platonism and hermeticism. His editions and commentaries on previously inaccessible sources became standard works before the First World War and an important source of inspiration to such figures as Jung Ezra Pound Yeats and Robert Duncan. A new entry in the Western Masters Series of concise biographies noting key figures in the Western esoteric tradition G.R.S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest introduces Mead's life works and influences combining a substantial biography with a collection of his most important writings.
language: English
title: G. R. S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest
publisher: North Atlantic Books