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.
Feminist journalist Frances Power Cobbe
remembered in 1854 being struck by one of EG
's stories, feeling suddenly that Love is greater than knowledge. This text was probably Libbie Marsh's Three Eras.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
GJ
entered the social scene of the capital with several connections already made. Her London friends included members of the Kingsley and Rossetti families, feminist reformer Frances Power Cobbe
, author John Ruskin
, Samuel Carter
Textual Production
Geraldine Jewsbury
The success of woman novelists in the circulating libraries led many publishers to employ women readers.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton University Press.
At the request of her publisher Macmillan, SJB
contributed an essay on Medicine as a Profession for Women to Josephine Butler
's Woman's Work and Woman's Culture. She was friendly with Butler and...
Friends, Associates
Sophia Jex-Blake
After the riot, the women received support from several notable people, including Frances Power Cobbe
and Harriet Martineau
. Martineau supported SJB
into the future as well: she sent her a small monetary contribution aimed...
Friends, Associates
Fanny Kemble
While they were both in London, Henry James
visited FK
weekly. She was a friend from the later 1840s with Frances Power Cobbe
, from whose partner, Mary Lloyd
, she rented a house at...
Wealth and Poverty
Fanny Kemble
Her estate at death was worth £205. In the latter part of her life she confided various letters and papers to her friend Frances Power Cobbe
, who concluded in going through them after her...
Friends, Associates
Anna Kingsford
AK
's wide-ranging interests brought her into contact with an array of people known to a greater or lesser extent in the intellectual life of the day. Through the women's movement she met Barbara Bodichon
Friends, Associates
Anna Kingsford
AK
appears to have had a somewhat complicated relationship with Frances Power Cobbe
. Their association seems to have begun around 1872, when Kingsford moved to London and became an active member of the English...
Material Conditions of Writing
Anna Kingsford
As a young married woman, AK
became active in the women's movement with the likes of Frances Power Cobbe
, Barbara Bodichon
, and Elizabeth Wolstenholme
; this soon led to her first distinctly political publication.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Education
Anna Kingsford
She had been inspired to discover more about medical research after publishing an anti-vivisection letter from Frances Power Cobbe
in her journal, The Lady's Own Paper.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
In preparation for her studies, AK
dabbled with...
politics
Anna Kingsford
AK
's active campaign against vivisection and in support of vegetarianism began as early as 1872, when she published a letter by Frances Power Cobbe
in The Lady's Own Paper.
Pert, Alan. Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford. Books and Writers.
40
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
By 1878, while...
Reception
Vernon Lee
This book lost Lee the friendship of others who had admired her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. Broken friendships included those with Oscar Wilde
(refigured as the character Posthlethwaite), Jane
and William Morris
Textual Features
Florence Marryat
In a melodramatic plot, the heroine, Rose Gordon, who has actually trained as a doctor but works as a nurse, marries a surgeon, Mr Lesquard. She does not discover until after the wedding that he...