‘Her usual daring style’: Feminist New Journalism, Pioneering Women, and Traces of Frances Power Cobbe

Abstract

In 1903, the feminist periodical Womanhood reprinted a memorial, organized by the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage, and one of many sent to Frances Power Cobbe on the occasion of her 80th birthday By that date, Cobbe’s journalism career had spanned four decades and many shifts in the journalistic landscape, from 1861 when she first published a periodical piece, through to the late 1890s when her journalism appeared irregularly Her early periodical and newspaper writing in the 1860s on women’s education, suffrage, property rights, and domestic violence circulated in newspaper leaders and established periodical titles operating on the ‘debate in serial form’ model. Her work from about 1875, in contrast, increasingly focused on antivivisection and the immorality of a purportedly materialistic medical science, and was circulated through letters to newspaper editors, pamphlets, books, and pressure-group periodical titles, as well as established periodicals. The signatories to Cobbe’s memorial offered congratulations,

recalling with deep gratitude how much you have contributed to inspire and uplift the hearts of toilers in the cause of the advancement of women, not only by your personal work or by your writings, but also by the cheering example of your whole life.¹