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
Author summary Claire Luckham
Claire Luckham's career as a playwright was launched in 1976, when the feminist theatre group Monstrous Regiment selected Scum (a play on which she and her husband collaborated) to open their first season. Her plays...
Performance of text Claire Luckham
CL 's historical play The Dramatic Attitudes of Miss Fanny Kemble opened at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton.
Luckham, Claire. Plays. Oberon.
50
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...
Occupation Adelaide Kemble
AK undertook a singing tour of France and Germany with family and friends, including Fanny Kemble , Mary Anne Thackeray and Henry Chorley . Liszt joined them in Germany.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. From Friend to Friend. Editor Ritchie, Emily, John Murray.
54
Occupation Maria Theresa Kemble
MTK returned to the stage to play Lady Capulet to her daughter's Juliet in Fanny Kemble 's acting debut.
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.
328
Occupation Eleanor Farjeon
In 1939, EF became a member of the executive committee of the PEN Club . She remained on the committee for ten years, during which its chief work was helping with the escape and establishment...
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...
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
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 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...
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...
Literary responses Georgiana Fullerton
Henry Fothergill Chorley , reviewing the novel for the Athenæum, found Grantley Manorhaunted by the intertextual spectre of Jane Austen 's Emma; he also drew parallels with Frances Burney 's Cecilia...
Literary responses Isabel Hill
IH 's brother later wrote that The First of May would have received more favourable reviews had it been given a different slot in the benefit. He also wished to see it performed on nights...
Literary responses Catherine Hubback
She is discussed as one of a group of British women who travelled or settled in the USA (along with Fanny Kemble , Frances Trollope , Harriet Martineau , Isabella Bird , and the diarist...
Intertextuality and Influence Emily Faithfull
The novel brings together the fashionable upper-class society which EF had experienced in her youth, with the question of women's employment which was the burning issue of her working life. She acknowledges the work of...

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