Fanny Kemble

27 November 1809 - 13 January 1893

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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...
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. 237 Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
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...
Family and Intimate relationships	Ann Hatton	and aunt of the actress and writer Fanny Kemble .
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	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...
Family and Intimate relationships	Adelaide Kemble	Actor Charles Kemble , father of Fanny and AK , took on the share of his brother John Philip Kemble in Covent Garden Theatre . Within a couple of years he took on the major...
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	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...
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. 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.
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	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.
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...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Martineau	HM 's social circle vastly expanded at this time until she knew virtually all the prominent people, particularly the political men, of her day. As she recorded in her Autobiography, however, she refused to...
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 ...

Timeline

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: His Masquerade, appeared.

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.