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.
Sometime in the later 1840s or early 1850s FPC
gave a lunch party for her neighbour Harriet St Leger
, and a friend of St Leger's, Fanny Kemble
. Although the lunch went poorly, Kemble...
Her brother the Rev. James Ogle
performed the ceremony.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
10880 (6 December 1819): 3
This late second marriage was apparently very happy. Tim Brand was a lawyer and in politics a strong Whig, who...
Family and Intimate relationships
Adelaide Kemble
AK
's sister, Fanny
, had dazzling early success as an actress before going on to further fame as a writer, feminist, and activist against slavery in the USA.
Family and Intimate relationships
Maria Theresa Kemble
Fanny Kemble
, MTK
's elder daughter, was born on 27 November 1809.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993.
316
Fanny became well known as an actress, writer, and abolitionist.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Family and Intimate relationships
Adelaide Procter
AP
's mother, born Anne Skepper
, was a clever and observant woman, a frequent and influential hostess to the London literary elite. Frances Kemble
considered her notable for her pungent epigrams and brilliant sallies...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Welsh Carlyle
As Thomas Carlyle's reputation grew, so did his popularity with women, including Fanny Kemble
, Geraldine Jewsbury, and Harriet Martineau.
Surtees, Virginia. Jane Welsh Carlyle. Michael Russell, 1986.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Editors Carlyle, Thomas and James Anthony Froude, Longmans, Green, 1883, 3 vols.
1: 67
A woman whom Carlyle himself particularly admired was the wealthy and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ann Hatton
and aunt of the actress and writer Fanny Kemble
.
Education
Elizabeth Taylor
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Dedications
Anna Brownell Jameson
ABJ
published in two volumes Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical and Historical, later renamed Shakespeare
's Heroines; it was dedicated to Fanny Kemble
.
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press, 1997.
237
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Cultural formation
Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR
came from the English middle class. She was an Anglican
in religion. Mary Russell Mitford
represents her as a young teacher taking a relaxed attitude to religious ideas in literary contexts (her students were...
