ABSTRACT
Frances Power Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1822, the youngest child and only daughter of a magistrate and landowner, Charles Cobbe (d. 1857) and his wife, Frances Conway (d. 1847). Educated initially at home in Ireland, she attended school in Brighton for two years (1836-38), but felt her real education began when she started a serious course of reading at home. Using the money her father left her on his death to travel, Cobbe became known chiefly as a philanthropist, who worked with the 'ragged school' scheme established by Mary Carpenter in Bristol, and then as an active antivivisectionist. She also published essays on women's rights, including Essays on the Pursuits of Women (1863) and The Duties of Women (1881). Cobbe never married, but set up house in Wales with her friend Mary Lloyd in 1884 when she inherited a further legacy. She died in 1904. Her autobiography, the two-volume Life of Frances Power Cobbe, from which the following excerpt is taken, was published in 1894.
