Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Power Cobbe
-
Standard Name: Cobbe, Frances Power
Birth Name: Frances Power Cobbe
Nickname: Fan
Nickname: Fanny
Pseudonym: C.
Pseudonym: F.
Pseudonym: F. P. C.
Pseudonym: Only a Woman
Pseudonym: Merlin Nostradamus
Used Form: Miss Cobbe
As one of the most prominent Victorian writers of non-fiction prose, and the only feminist of the period who wrote regularly in periodicals, FPC
published prolifically in a range of genres from reportage and travel writing to social criticism, theology, and ethics. As a professional journalist she wrote more than a hundred periodical essays, and above a thousand anonymous newspaper leaders. She published, at a conservative estimate, eighteen books and innumerable tracts. A key figure in the Victorian women's movement, she produced ground-breakingly trenchant as well as frequently witty analyses of women's social and political disabilities, representing womanly duty as feminist praxis. All her social writings are grounded in her life-long effort to promulgate a nondenominational theistic system of ethics. In her later career she dedicated herself to fighting animal vivisection (a cause she characterized as an abolitionist crusade analogous to anti-slavery) and the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts. For the anti-vivisection campaign alone she produced considerable journalism and at least two hundred tracts. Her theology, ethics, feminism, and anti-vivisection converged in her argument that sympathy—beyond as well as within the human community—was an index of true civilisation.
Hamilton, Susan. “Locating Victorian Feminism: Frances Power Cobbe, Feminist Writing, and the Periodical Press”. Nineteenth-Century Feminisms, No. 2, pp. 48-66.
48
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press.
As a direct result of such work, she became a friend of such women as Josephine Butler
and Frances Power Cobbe
.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Textual Production
Julia Wedgwood
She likewise supported with her pen Frances Power Cobbe
's anti-vivisection cause, which she continued to favour after she had renounced the suffrage campaign.
Herford, Charles Harold, and Julia Wedgwood. “Frances Julia Wedgwood: A Memoir by the Editor”. The Personal Life of Josiah Wedgwood the Potter, Macmillan, p. xi - xxx.
Theodore Watts-Dunton
's tribute in the Athenæum recalled a noble band of women represented by George Eliot
, Mrs. Webster, and Miss Cobbe
, who, in virtue of lofty purpose, purity of soul, and deep...
Textual Production
Augusta Webster
Frances Power Cobbe
also attacked Bright in print on this occasion.
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
In the 1870s and 1880s AW
was mentioned in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic—in Harper's and Scribner's, for instance, as well as in English publications—as one of the leading women poets of...
Occupation
Mary Augusta Ward
In the wake of Robert Elsmere's success, MAW
sought to prove the feasibility of the New Brotherhood which she had described in her novel through the foundation of a similar philanthropic organisation. As she...
Occupation
Anna Swanwick
The occasion was a plan by some leaders of the women's suffrage movement to use AS
's great scholarly reputation as a public-relations tool to demonstrate the abilities of women. She was expected to second...
Frances Power Cobbe
later recalled the occasion in 1873 when AS
(who was expected at a meeting of women to say literally a few words, befitting her position as a figurehead for the movement) found...
MS
met Frances Power Cobbe
in Florence where both women campaigned to stop a physiology professor from practising vivisection. MS
declared Cobbe to be the cleverest and most agreeable woman I ever met with, and...
Textual Production
Mary Somerville
In her eighty-ninth year MS
composed a lively autobiography which was heavily edited for publication by her daughter Martha
. Her friend and fellow author Frances Power Cobbe
also helped with the editing process.
Patterson, Elizabeth Chambers. Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815-1840. Martinus Nijhoff.
194
Reception
Mary Somerville
Personal Recollections deals at length with the people MS
knew, rather than with her intellectual development or her scientific work. Large portions about the representation of science, in fact, were removed at the suggestion of...
Timeline
1752: Francis Coventry anonymously published The...
Writing climate item
1752
Francis Coventry
anonymously published The History of Pompey the Little; or, the life and adventures of a lap-dog, a novelà clef which satirizes Pompey's successive owners.
23 June 1849: Louisa Nottidge's relatives were were put...
Building item
23 June 1849
Louisa Nottidge
's relatives were were put on trial for confining her against her will in a lunatic asylum; she was awarded £50 damages.
1850: The Royal Academy unleashed the full weight...
20 December 1852: Britain annexed South Burma during the Second...
National or international item
20 December 1852
Britain annexed South Burma during the Second Burmese War.
June 1853: The Act for the Better Prevention of Aggravated...
National or international item
June 1853
The Act for the Better Prevention of Aggravated Assault Upon Women and Children made wife assault punishable by up to six months imprisonment or a £20 fine.
3 November 1855: An advertisement marked the launch of the...
Writing climate item
3 November 1855
An advertisement marked the launch of the conservative (high Tory
and Anglo-Catholic
), weeklySaturday Review; it focused on Politics, Literature, Science, and Art.
16 April 1860: King Victor Emmanuel II made his triumphal...
August 1864: The English Woman's Journal, a practical...
Building item
August 1864
The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.
23 May 1865: The Kensington Society, a quarterly women's...
Building item
23 May 1865
The Kensington Society
, a quarterly women's discussion group devoted to social and political issues, held its inaugural meeting in London.
Autumn 1867: The London National Society for Women's Suffrage...
Cobbe, Frances Power. Darwinism in Morals, and Other Essays. Williams and Norgate, 1872.
Elliot, Margaret, and Frances Power Cobbe. Destitute Incurables in the Workhouses. James Nisbet, 1860.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Essays on the Pursuits of Women. Emily Faithfull, 1863.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Essays on the Pursuits of Women. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Female Education, and How it Would be Affected by University Examinations. Emily Faithfull, 1862.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Friendless Girls, and How to Help Them. Emily Faithfull, 1861.
Cobbe, Frances Power. “Introduction”. The Woman Question in Europe, edited by Theodore Stanton, Source Book Press, 1970, p. xiii - xviii.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Italics: Brief Notes on Politics, People, and Places in Italy, in 1864. Trübner, 1864.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Life of Frances Power Cobbe. R. Bentley and Son, 1894.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Life of Frances Power Cobbe. Houghton, Mifflin, 1894.
Cobbe, Frances Power. “Social Science Congresses, and Women’s Part in Them”. Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol.
5
, pp. 81-94.
Cobbe, Frances Power. “Speech at the Women’s Suffrage Meeting, St. George’s Hall: 13 May 1876”. Before the Vote Was Won, edited by Jane Lewis, Routledge, 1987, pp. 264-8.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Studies New and Old of Ethical and Social Subjects. Trübner, 1865.
Cobbe, Frances Power. Studies New and Old of Ethical and Social Subjects. William V. Spencer, 1866.
Cobbe, Frances Power. The Cities of the Past. Trübner, 1864.
Parker, Theodore. The Collected Works of Theodore Parker. Editor Cobbe, Frances Power, Trübner, 1871.
Cobbe, Frances Power. The Confessions of a Lost Dog. Griffith and Farran, 1867.
Cobbe, Frances Power. The Duties of Women. G. H. Ellis, 1881.
Cobbe, Frances Power. The Duties of Women. Williams and Norgate, 1881.
Cobbe, Frances Power. The Duties of Women. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.