Fanny Kemble

-
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
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Much of the letters and reminiscences here concern her friends the sisters Fanny Kemble and Adelaide Kemble, later Sartoris .
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...
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...
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,...
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 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...
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.