Sophia Dobson Collet

Sophia Dobson Collet
Portrait taken from The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy, edited by Hem Chandra Sarkar (1914)
Born	Sophia Dobson (1822-02-01)1 February 1822 St. Pancras, London, England
Died	27 March 1894(1894-03-27) (aged 72) Highbury, London, England

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.

Sophia Dobson Collet was born Sophia Dobson in the parish of St. Pancras, London, the fifth of seven children of John Dobson (1778–1827), and his wife (and first cousin), Elizabeth Barker (1787–1875). She was described by Richard Garnett in the biography of William Johnson Fox as having attacks of a "disabling illness". Her elder brother was the Chartist radical Collet Dobson Collet (1812–1898). Another of her brothers was the engineer Edward Dobson (1816/17?–1908). She was the aunt of social reformer Clara Collet (1860–1948), who worked with Charles Booth on his great investigative work Life and Labour of the People of London.

Collet was a supporter of the South Place Ethical Chapel (now Conway Hall Ethical Society) and wrote several hymns for the organisation.Her brother Charles was its musical director. She was friends with the South Place composer Eliza Flower and Sarah Fuller Flower Adams.

It is at South Place that she came into contact with George Holyoake. 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. She is also credited with preserving many of Fox's writings.