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
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, 1997.
237
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908.
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...
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 Maria Theresa Kemble
Fanny Kemble , MTK 's elder daughter, was born on 27 November 1809.
Highfill, Philip H., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans. 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, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, 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 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.
131
Clarke, Norma. Ambitious Heights. Routledge, 1990.
7
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Editors Carlyle, Thomas and James Anthony Froude, Longmans, Green, 1883.
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 .
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...
Friends, Associates Henry James
HJ 's circle of acquaintance in the world of letters and the theatre was very wide. As well as men of letters such as Edmund Gosse , it included a great many women writers, among...
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...
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,...
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...

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, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, and Alexandre Dumas. 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.