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.
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...
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
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...
Besant, Annie. A World Without God. A Reply to Miss Frances Power Cobbe. Freethought Publishing.
prelims
Textual Production
Anna Swanwick
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...
Textual Production
Caroline Frances Cornwallis
This book came out of CFC
's long held sentiment that the current treatment of children needed to be corrected.
Cornwallis, Caroline Frances. Selections from the Letters of Caroline Frances Cornwallis. Editor Power, M. C., Trübner and Co.
202, 204-5
The Ragged School Union
had been founded in 1844 to promote education for...
Fredeman, William E. “Emily Faithfull and the Victoria Press: An Experiment in Sociological Bibliography”. The Library, Vol.
29
, No. 2, pp. 139-64.
162
As a publisher she produced a high proportion of texts by female authors, including Frances Power Cobbe
, Sarah Stickney Ellis
, Louisa Twining
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.
xxvii
Textual Features
Wilkie Collins
Heart and Science concerns the struggle between an orphaned heiress, Carmina, and the 'scientific' aunt and guardian who want her fortune. Carmina becomes a human subject of vivisectionist Dr Benjulia, who to further his own...
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...
Textual Features
Josephine Butler
Here JB
argues that women's limited employment, particularly as governesses and seamstresses, is an undeniable reality, and that as a consequence of this reality, both education and training are required to free women from economic...
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.