Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) is the most important nineteenth-century British writer and activist not heretofore treated in a full-length biography. She worked to improve conditions for delinquent girls and for the sick poor, promoted university degrees for women, roused support for the Union during the American Civil War, advocated for victims of marital violence, campaigned for women's suffrage, and engaged in a battle with leading physicians decrying the use of animal experimentation. Sally Mitchell has unearthed extensive material by or relating to Cobbe over the last several years, dramatically increasing and updating the information now available about this major figure in social and literary history. Mitchell traces the detail of Cobbe's life and work, analyzes her writing, and sets both in the context of the social and intellectual debates of her time.
