Frances Power Cobbe

Marion Spies (Bergische Universität-GHS Wuppertal)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Dates

Born 4 Dec 1822
Died 5 Apr 1908
Activity 1855-1894

Places

Born in Ireland, Republic of (Eire)
Active in England

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Activities

Primary

Educationalist
Essayist
Moralist
Pamphleteer
Reformer

Other

Religious writer
Travel writer

Resources

Cobbe's Works

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Frances Power Cobbe was born on 4 December 1822 in Dublin, the only daughter of Charles Cobbe and Frances Conway Cobbe. Her family was Evangelical and belonged to the Anglo-Irish gentry. She had various governesses before she went to a ladies' school in Brighton from 1836 to 1838. After her mother's death she was the female head of the family and therefore taught at the village school and cared for the sick and the poor. Between 1852 and 1855 she wrote

An Essay on the Theory of Intuitive Morals

, in which her theistic world view clearly comes out and which was published anonymously in 1855. When her father died in 1857, he left her a small patrimony, which enabled her to travel to Egypt and Jerusalem via Italy and Greece before settling in Bristol to work at reformatories and ragged…

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354 words

Citation: Spies, Marion. "Frances Power Cobbe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=930, accessed 22 November 2024.]