Fuller, Jean (Violet) Overton (1915-)

Actress, writer, and member of a group that included poet Dylan Thomas and novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson. Fuller was born March 7, 1915, at Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1930-31), was a student of painting at Academie Julien, Paris, and finished college at the University of London (B.A. honors English, 1945). She later studied astronomy (because of an interest in astrology) at Goldsmith's College (1962-64).

Her varied career included a period as an actress, government service with the British Ministry of Information, and lecturing at the Speech Fellowship, London. She was a member of the British Astronomical Association, the Society of Authors, PEN, Poetry Society, Manifold Group of Poets, and the Dulwich Group of Poets. She also was a member of the Society for Physical Research, and Buddhist Society, and served as vice-president of the Astrological Lodge of the Theosophical Society.

Besides her involvement with Theosophy, teaching about God and the world based on mystical insights, in the circle of Dylan Thomas during the 1930s she became a close friend of occultist and poet Victor Neuburg and wrote a sympathetic biography of him, The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg (1965). This volume contains one of the most complete accounts of the magic work of Neuberg and Aleister Crowley, including the story of Crowley's rediscovery of "sex magick" in 1912 in the Cairo workings. (Fuller was not related to J. F. C. Fuller, who also knew Neuburg and Aleister Crowley.) Fuller also wrote biographies of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Noor Inayat Khan.

Sources:

Fuller, Jean Overton. Blavatsky and Her Teachers: An Investigative Biography. London: East-West Publications, 1988.

——. Madeleine: The Story of Noor Inayat Kahn. London: Gollancz, 1952. Reprinted as Noor-un-nisa Inayat Kahn (Madeleine). Rotterdam: East-West Publications, 1971.

——. The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg. London: W. H. Allen, 1965.