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.
This book exerted important influence on other reformers including Frances Power Cobbe
.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1246 (13 September 1851): 972-3
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press.
82
Intertextuality and Influence
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
The poems take up various late-Victorian feminist issues, and their topicality and title seem to make them an implicit rebuttal of Tennyson
's nostalgic Idylls of the King. In A Woman's Ethics (perhaps an...
Intertextuality and Influence
Wilkie Collins
It had appeared serially in Belgravia, as well as in a number of newspapers. Collins dedicated Heart and Science to Napoleon Sarnoy
, a photographer well-known for his pornographic postcards. The novel was partly...
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
Jessie Boucherett
Partly through her membership of the Kensington Society
(a social and political discussion group of about fifty women inaugurated in 1865), JB
broadened her acquaintance with significant members of the feminist movement, including Frances Power Cobbe
Friends, Associates
Emily Faithfull
As a member of the Langham Place GroupEF
counted most of the women activists of the day among her friends. Her far-flung circle of associates included Adelaide Procter
and Frances Power Cobbe
.
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
183, 16
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...
Friends, Associates
Emily Faithfull
EF
suffered in various ways as a result of the trial. The sense that she had prevaricated, at the very least, alienated many of her associates on The English Woman's Journal, including Emily Davies
Friends, Associates
Julia Wedgwood
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.
Friends, Associates
Felicia Skene
From her youth FS
was accustomed to mixing with distinguished people. Sir Walter Scott
, a friend of both of her parents, found her youthful company a relief when he was old and ill. In...
Friends, Associates
Mary Carpenter
This house was bought for her by Lady Byron
, who also arranged for Carpenter's close friend and fellow activist Frances Power Cobbe
to move into Red Lodge with her in November that year. Cobbe...
Friends, Associates
Geraldine Jewsbury
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
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...