Fanny Kemble

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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.
Black and white photograph of a painting of Fanny Kemble by Sir Thomas Lawrence, She is seated in a chair draped with a fur-trimmed blanket, with a column visible in the background. She is wearing a white gown, low on her shoulders, with wasp waist, puffed sleeves, and ruffled trim. Her dark, shining hair, smooth and middle-parted, is pulled back in a bun.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Occupation Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
BBBD was a woman whose talent and energy found many other outlets besides writing. She performed as a fortune-teller at a social gathering.
Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray.
18
Fanny Kemble in Recollections of a Girlhood remembered her as a...
Family and Intimate relationships Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
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...
Friends, Associates Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
BBBD 's circle of friends at this period of her life, many of them entertained by herself and her husband at the Hoo but many whose relationship with her went back to long before her...
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...
Literary responses Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Fanny Kemble wrote: Her English version of Petrarch's sonnets . . . seem to me as nearly perfect as that species of literature can be.
Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt.
346
Robert Percy Smith wrote: I really know of no...
Literary responses Charlotte Brontë
Harriet Martineau , finding the work attributed to herself even by members of her own family, felt that the unknown author must know not only my books but myself very well. . . . With...
Friends, Associates Maria Callcott
Her friends at this period of her life included the diarist and letter-writer Caroline Fox (with whom her relationship was very close),
This is the Hon. Caroline Fox (1767-1845), not to be confused with the...
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.
131
Clarke, Norma. Ambitious Heights. Routledge.
7
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Editors Carlyle, Thomas and James Anthony Froude, Longmans, Green.
1: 67
A woman whom Carlyle himself particularly admired was the wealthy and...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
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...
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
FPC also numbered Americans among her wide circle of friends. Louisa May Alcott recalled vividly how her assumption that FPC would be a serious, severe lady, of the Cornelia Blimber school was immediately banished on...
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...
Friends, Associates Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
Her parents often hosted musical and cultural events that drew visitors from London's artistic circles. As a girl, MEC would have seen Alfred Tennyson , John Ruskin , William Holman Hunt , Fanny Kemble ...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
The volume includes literary criticism on works by Richard Watson Dixon and William Butler Yeats . The memoir The Drawing-Room recalls Robert Browning 's visit to MEC 's childhood home. Recollections of Mrs. Fanny Kemble

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...

Building item

20 March 1863

The executive of the Ladies' London Emancipation Society first convened at the home of Mentia Taylor ; the Society aimed to enlist British sympathy for the North in the US Civil War.

Texts

Kemble, Fanny. A Year of Consolation. E. Moxon, 1847.
Kemble, Fanny. Fanny Kemble: The American Journals. Editor Mavor, Elizabeth, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990.
Kemble, Fanny. Far Away and Long Ago. Richard Bentley and Son, 1889.
Kemble, Fanny. Further Records, 1848-1883. Richard Bentley, 1890.
Kemble, Fanny, and J. G. Stodart. Further Records, 1848-1883. B. Blom, 1972.
Kemble, Fanny. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863.
Kemble, Fanny. Journal of F.A. Butler. J. Murray, 1835.
Kemble, Fanny. Notes upon Some of Shakespeare’s Plays. Richard Bentley and Son, 1882.
Kemble, Fanny et al. Plays. Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863.
Kemble, Fanny. Poems. H. G. Clarke, 1844.
Kemble, Fanny. Poems. Richard Bentley and Son, 1883.
Kemble, Fanny. Record of a Girlhood. Richard Bentley and Son, 1878.
Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt, 1879.
Kemble, Fanny. Records of Later Life. Richard Bentley and Son, 1882.
Kemble, Fanny. The Adventures of Mr. John Timothy Homespun in Switzerland. Richard Bentley and Son, 1889.
Kemble, Fanny. “The Answer of Frances Anne Butler to the libel of Pierce Butler”. Pierce Butler vs. Frances Anne Butler, 1848, pp. 3-26.
Kemble, Fanny. The Essence of Slavery. Editor Craig, Isa, Emily Faithfull, 1863.
Kemble, Fanny. The Star of Seville. Saunders and Otley, 1837.