Kemble, Fanny ___ 1809-1893 ___ British ___ actor

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Fanny was born into a theatrical family - both her parents were actors. She made her first appearance, when about 20, as the heroine in her father's production of Romeo and Juliet at a theatre in Covent Garden. She proved to be an immediate success, and helped revive the theatre's fortunes. In 1833, while on tour in the US with her father, she met Pierce Butler, a southern planter. She married him, stayed in the US, and gave up acting. Unfortunately, she and her husband disagreed fundamentally over the issue of slavery. In 1836, Butler and his brother inherited their father's Georgia plantation which owned hundreds of slaves. In 1838, Fanny (with her two children) spent four months at the plantations on Butler and St Simon's islands, and recorded her experiences. Her 'Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation' is considered one of the most detailed descriptions of plantation slavery ever recorded by a white northern abolitionist. Thereafter, the family returned to Philadelphia, but the marriage broke down; and, thereafter, Butler denied Kemble access to her children. She returned to England and the stage, but then went back to the US to deal with a divorce suit. The divorce was granted in 1849. Kemble retired to Lennox, Massachusetts, and wrote several autobiographical works some of them based on the journals she had kept.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Remembering Fanny Kemble

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1831-1839 ___ literary social travel theatre slavery US

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext
etext
some pages

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania - possibly

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-39
Record of a Girlhood
The American Journals
 

May 2005, July 2008, April 2013
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.