Sophia Dobson Collet
Sophia Dobson Collet | |
---|---|
St. Pancras, London, England | |
Died | 27 March 1894 , London, England | (aged 72)
Sophia Dobson Collet (1 February 1822 – 27 March 1894) was a 19th-century English feminist freethinker. She wrote under the pen name Panthea in George Holyoake's Reasoner, wrote for The Spectator and was a friend of the leading feminist Frances Power Cobbe.
Family background
Sophia Dobson Collet was born Sophia Dobson in the parish of
South Place Ethical Chapel
Collet was a supporter of the South Place Ethical Chapel (now Conway Hall Ethical Society) and wrote several hymns for the organisation.[3] Her brother Charles was its musical director.[4] She was friends with the South Place composer Eliza Flower and Sarah Fuller Flower Adams.[5]
It is at South Place that she came into contact with George Holyoake.[6] She would contribute to both The Reasoner and The Movement from the 1840s to 1850s as well as have continued correspondence with Holyoake long after.[6] She is also credited with preserving many of Fox's writings.[2]
She wrote an appraisal of George Holyoake and his work in George Jacob Holyoake and modern atheism: a biographical and critical essay in 1855 which was well received.[1] The book was an expanded version of what she had written as Panthea in the Free Inquirer.[7] It echoed the same conciliatory tone between religion and non-religion that Holyoake had long espoused.
Feminism
Collet remained a Unitarian even as South Place moved into a non-religious direction. However, she "condemned the oppression of women in Scripture and the subordinate position assigned to them by Christianity."[6]
She joined the
Her name appears on the petition for female suffrage published by The Fortnightly Review.
Later life
Collet met Ralph Waldo Emerson and had a lifelong interest in transcendentalism.[1] Moncure D. Conway recollected in his autobiography that Ralph Waldo Emerson had asked after her as well.[5]
She also had an interest in
She is buried in the dissenters section on the west side of Highgate Cemetery.
Publications
- George Jacob Holyoake and modern atheism: a biographical and critical essay (1855)[1]
- The Brahmo Year-Book
- Lectures and Tracts by Keshub Chunder Sen (1870)
- A Historical Sketch of the Brahmo Somaj (1873)
- Outlines and Episodes of Brahmic History (1884)[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Gleadle, Kathryn. "Sophia Dobson Collet". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
- ^ a b Garnett, Richard (1910). The life of W. J. Fox. London: John Lane Company. pp. 223–224.
- ISBN 0-7190-0557-4.
- ^ "Collet Family History". Retrieved 17 October 2013.
- ^ a b Conway, Moncure (1904). Autobiography: Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway (v. 2). London: Cassell and Company, Limited. p. 39.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7190-8582-6.
- ^ Collet, Sophia Dobson (1855). George Jacob Holyoake and Modern Atheism: A biographical and critical essay. London: Trubner and Co. pp. Preface.
- ^ Snell, Henry (1938). Men, movements and Myself. London: J M Dent and Sons Ltd. p. 178.