Frances Power Cobbe

Marion Spies (Bergische Universität-GHS Wuppertal)
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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…

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 19 March 2024.]

930 Frances Power Cobbe 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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