Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Fanny Kemble
-
Standard Name: Kemble, Fanny
Birth Name: Frances Anne Kemble
Married Name: Frances Anne Butler
FK
was a prolific nineteenth-century writer best known for her journals, which covered her life in the theatre and her residence in the American south. Her first-hand documentation of the institution of slavery was particularly controversial. Apart from her journals she experimented with drama, poetry, and autobiography, and—late in life—wrote her very first and only novel.
ABJ
returned to the United States via Montreal and Quebec City. In the USA she visited Fanny Kemble
in Philadelphia, developed a friendship with Catherine Sedgwick
, and was received in Massachusetts by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Nor was she entirely charmed by her husband's lady admirers,
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Editors Carlyle, Thomas and James Anthony Froude, Longmans, Green.
1: 66
though they make perfect fodder for her caricatures. To her close friend John Sterling
, Jane writes: You cannot fancy what a way...
NRS
says she has often found that my own selection of relevant detail has lighted on facts passed over as insignificant by other writers.
Royde-Smith, Naomi. The Private Life of Mrs. Siddons. V. Gollancz.
11
She hopes to place her subject in a light, possibly...
Textual Production
Eleanor Farjeon
EF
linked her novel Humming Bird with the journals of Fanny Kemble
, since it is titled from a hummingbird musical box modelled on one that Kemble describes.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae.
229, 304
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
Mitford was planning this tragedy by March 1827, though she said she had not yet drafted as much as ten lines.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 68-70
Charles Kemble
expressed interest in it in 1828, but she turned him...
Textual Production
Isa Craig
IC
compiled and edited for the Ladies' London Emancipation Society
a work entitled The Essence of Slavery, extracted from Fanny Kemble
's recent Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation.
Much of the letters and reminiscences here concern her friends the sisters Fanny Kemble
and Adelaide Kemble, later Sartoris
.
Textual Production
Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Another play by BBBD
, called Isaure and having as protagonist a refined patrician beauty,
Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt.
383
was intended to be performed at Covent Garden
as a benefit piece for Fanny Kemble
, but it...
Textual Features
Margaret Emily Shore
The diary provides a full and vivid account of girlhood in the years leading up to Victoria
's reign, in addition to musings on familial and personal topics. It contains substantial literary criticism, such as...
Textual Features
Julia Pardoe
JP
's aspirations for this biography were to revise the official accounts of Francis the First's life (which relied originally on reports bound by censorship) with materials derived from confidential records and correspondence.
Pardoe, Julia. The Court and Reign of Francis the First, King of France. R. Bentley and Son.
I: viii
Residence
Frances Power Cobbe
A number of deaths among her close friends and relatives, together with her gruelling anti-Vivisection work, made London an increasingly stressful home for FPC
. For several years she and Lloyd led a nomadic lifestyle...
Reception
Frances Arabella Rowden
Rowden's poem was reviewed by the Critical (3rd series 20 (May 1810): 112). Mary Russell Mitford
read the first canto with high appreciation and admiration that increase[d] with every perusal. She expected it to rank...
Reception
Anna Brownell Jameson
An early review from the Westminster Review mentions its dislike of mixing a guide-book and a romance
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press.
101
before going on to censure the author for her inadmissable lie about the authenticity of the diary....
Publishing
Georgiana Chatterton
She had signed the agreement with her publisher, Richard Bentley
, on 4 December 1861.
“The Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton”. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
She says that she set out here rather to give the value of the words than their scholastic or critically...
Timeline
15 September 1830: The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the...
National or international item
15 September 1830
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first large-scale passenger steam railway, was officially opened; public timetabled service began on 17 September.
1 April 1857: Herman Melville's last novel, The Confidence-Man:...
Writing climate item
1 April 1857
Herman Melville
's last novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, appeared.
20 March 1863: The executive of the Ladies' London Emancipation...