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 died at the Clinique Juillard before being seen by a doctor, and was buried in Geneva. Among the many who paid tribute to her were Arabella Shore
and Frances Power Cobbe
.
Blackburn, Helen. Women’s Suffrage. Source Book Press.
186-7
Occupation
Isabella Beeton
Henceforth, at the age of twenty-four, IB
took on what was in effect an equal partnership with her husband in the planning and editing of the magazine, and began to work outside her home in...
Besant, Annie. A World Without God. A Reply to Miss Frances Power Cobbe. Freethought Publishing.
prelims
Occupation
Mary Frances Billington
MFB
was earning enough from her career in journalism to be able to support herself by her late teens. She established herself as a successful writer and editor for national dailies and a career journalist...
Occupation
Mary Frances Billington
Her work on the Southern Echo had attracted the notice of the journalist and philanthropist John Passmore Edwards
of the London Echo. Few women then held positions such as her new one, though Frances Power Cobbe
Leisure and Society
Isa Blagden
IB
was fond of society life, had a wide circle of friends, and was noted for her hospitality. Her home at the Villa Brichieri, with its terraced garden overlooking Florence and the Arno, was...
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...
politics
Jessie Boucherett
An active suffragist, JB
helped (with a committee whose members included Harriet Martineau
, Frances Power Cobbe
and Mary Somerville
) to organize the suffrage petition presented to Parliament on 7 June.
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
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
Frances Power Cobbe
, who years later travelled from Venice to Florence to meet the author of Aurora Leigh, noted that Casa Guidi became a place of pilgrimage during [EBB
's] life, and...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh was welcomed with enthusiasm by many female writers and feminists: it became a touchstone of Victorian feminist poetry for its unrivalled ambition and the scope of its achievement. One moving testimony to its...
politics
Robert Browning
RB
demonstrated his own progressive commitment to higher education for women by signing Emily Davies
's 1867 Memorial Respecting the Need of a Place of Higher Education for Girls. He also publicly supported anti-vivisection...
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.