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.
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.
xxvii
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.
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
Textual Production
Sophia Jex-Blake
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...
Besant, Annie. A World Without God. A Reply to Miss Frances Power Cobbe. Freethought Publishing.
prelims
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...
Wealth and Poverty
Isa Blagden
IB
supported herself primarily through her writing, which provided her with a modest income. She lived outside the city of Florence in order to minimize her rent, and generally shared her expenses with another woman...