Frances Power Cobbe and Victorian Feminism

Frances Power Cobbe was a mid-Victorian feminist journalist and one of a handful of women to make a steady living writing for the nineteenth-century established press. She was involved in the national women's suffrage campaign, argued for women's increased educational and employment opportunities, and was a vocal critic of marriage. Instrumental in the passage of the 1878 Matrimonial Causes Act, which made domestic violence grounds for legal separation, she also helped to write the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act. She was one of the best-known feminist thinkers of her day. Despite her prodigious accomplishments, her writings have been neglected. Drawing on historical and literary approaches, this book examines the links between Victorian feminism and the established press, and insists on the importance of what it meant to have a Victorian feminist write for the established press. Book jacket.

SUSAN HAMILTON is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.