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
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.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Friends, Associates Louisa Catherine Shore
During her stay in Fulham, LCS made some literary contacts, including Fanny Kemble and Sara Coleridge .
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.
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...
Literary responses Elizabeth Sewell
Her autobiography has received the most recent critical attention of her writings. Critic Valerie Sanders compares it with other autobiographies (by Harriet Martineau , Fanny Kemble and Margaret Oliphant ), and notes ES 's conflicted...
Friends, Associates Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Closest to CMS were her siblings and their spouses, several of whom were also published authors. The Sedgwick family and Fanny Kemble were apparently the inner circle of the literary scene in the Berkshires,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Naomi Royde-Smith
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...
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...
Occupation Frances Arabella Rowden
In Paris she founded another school, a Protestant (Anglican) competitor to the convents which generally had the educating of upper- and middle-class French girls. This school, whose French staff were Protestants, opened in the rue...
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...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Much of the letters and reminiscences here concern her friends the sisters Fanny Kemble and Adelaide Kemble, later Sartoris .
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...
Friends, Associates Adelaide Procter
AP 's parents entertained a circle of well-known literary personages, including Leigh Hunt , William Hazlitt , Thomas Moore , Wordsworth , Tennyson , Longfellow , and Henry James . Intimates of the household included...
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
Friends, Associates Caroline Norton
Before her marriage CN had formed a friendship with the Irish poet Tom Moore , once a crony of her famous grandfather; this friendship endured into her middle age. It was also as Richard Brinsley...
Literary responses Caroline Norton
Fanny Kemble , whose stage career was nearly two years old, found the play an effective tear-jerker, although it abounded in atrocious situations.
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby.
78
The Times saw merit in it of a distinguished kind.
Atkinson, Diane. The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton. Preface Publishing.
78

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.