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.

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Connections

Connections	Author name Sort descending	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. Grey, Barbarina Charlotte, Lady. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray, 1908. 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, 1879. 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, 1879. 346 Robert Percy Smith wrote: I really know of no...
Travel	Fredrika Bremer	Heading south again, she continued to learn about the institution of slavery and read the writings of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Fanny Kemble . Stendahl, Brita K. The Education of a Self-Made Woman. The Edwin Mellen Press, 1994, https://archive.org/details/educationofselfm0000sten/mode/2up?q=%22geijer%22+%22stina%22+%22boklin%22. 125 Yet her later account suggests the inadequacy of any...
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, 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, 3 vols. 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, 1883, 3 vols. 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 ...

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.

Carlson, Robert E. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Project 1821-1831. Augustus M. Kelley, 1969.

231-6

Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.

256

Bruno, Leonard. On the Move: A Chronology of Advances in Transportation. Gale Research, 1993.

81, 84-5

Ellis, Hamilton. British Railway History: An Outline from the Accession of William IV to the Nationalisation of Railways 1830-1876. George Allen and Unwin, 1954.

17-18

1 April 1857

Herman Melville 's last novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, appeared.

Athenæum. J. Lection.

1537: 462-3

Melville, Herman. “Foreword”. The Confidence-Man, edited by Hershel Parker, Norton, 1971, p. ix - xi.

The Life and Works of Herman Melville. http://www.melville.org/.

“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.

250

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.

Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press, 2004.

132

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Texts

Kemble, Fanny. A Year of Consolation. E. Moxon, 1847, 2 vols.

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. Francis the First. J. Murray, 1832.

Kemble, Fanny. Further Records, 1848-1883. Richard Bentley, 1890, 2 vols.

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, 2 vols.

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, 3 vols.

Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt, 1879.

Kemble, Fanny. Records of Later Life. Richard Bentley and Son, 1882, 3 vols.

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.