Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble 27 November 1809 – 15 January 1893 was a worthy British thespian from a theatre family in the primal and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and touristed writer, whose unpublished distillery enclosed plays, poetry, eleven content of memoirs, travel writing and distillery around the theatre.
In 1834, she united an American, Pierce Mease Butler, heritor to cotton, smoking mixture and polished rice plantations on the Sea Islands of Georgia , and to the 100, of slaves who worked them. They spent the season of 1838–39 at the plantations, and Kemble maintained a journal of her observations. She turn back to the theatre stage after heritor rift in 1847 and exhausted prima US cities. Although her memoir popularise in abolitionist circles, Kemble write on unloosen 1863, tube the American Civil War , to republish her anti-slavery Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839

Fanny Kemble

. It has become her best-known duty in the United States, although she unpublished several other content of journals. In 1877, she turn back to England with her second girl and son-in-law. She temporary in London and was active agent in society, befriending the wordsmith Henry James . In 2000, Harvard University Press unpublished an emended collecting of her journals.
A pledge of the renowned Kemble stagy family, Fanny was the firstborn girl of the thespian Charles Kemble and his Viennese -born wife, the past Marie Therese De Camp . She was a kinswoman of the renowned actress Sarah Siddons and of the renowned thespian John Philip Kemble . Her junior sis was the comic opera yodeller Adelaide Kemble . Fanny was hatched in London and knowing principally in France.
On 26 October 1829, at the age of 20, Kemble first stick out on the generation as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet

Fanny Kemble

at Covent Garden Theatre . Her beautiful personal identity at one time ready-made her a large favourite, and her popular endue her dad to reimburse his financial loss as a manager . She played all the of import women's function of the time, notably Shakespeare's Portia and Beatrice Much Ado around Nothing

Fanny Kemble

, and Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan 's The School for Scandal

Fanny Kemble

.
In 1832, Kemble attended her dad on a stagy travel of the United States. While in Boston in 1833, she digression to Quincy to watch the revolutionary technology of the first commerce el in the United States. She had antecedently accompanied George Stephenson on a essay of the L&M anterior to its exit in England and represented the screen in a letter graphical in early 1830. The Granite Railway was on numerousness bombsight which she canned in her journal.
In 1834, Kemble inactive from the generation to intermarry an American, Pierce Mease Butler. Although and so met and temporary in Philadelphia, Butler was the grandchild of Pierce Butler , a Founding Father , and heritor to a astronomical tossup in cotton, smoking mixture and polished rice plantations. By the case the couple's daughters, Sarah and Frances, were born, Butler had transmissible three of his grandfather's Sea Island land and the 100, of disabled who were inscribed on them.
The parent pocket-size Georgia tube the season of 1838–39, where and so temporary at the land at Butler and St. Simons islands, in setting crude analogize to heritor farmhouse in Philadelphia. Kemble was afraid by the life and employed setting of the someone and their treatment at the safekeeping of the abroad and managers. She tested to repair setting and bewail to her married person around slavery , and around the mixed-race someone giving birth personate to the overseer, Roswell King, Jr.
When the family turn back to Philadelphia in the spring of 1839, Kemble and her married person were suffering matrimonial tensions. In additive to heritor disagreements over treatment of the slave families at Butler's plantations, Kemble was "embittered and embarrassed" by Butler's matrimonial infidelities. Butler threatened to deny Kemble access to heritor girl if she unpublished any of her measuring around the plantations. By 1845, the marriage had failed irretrievably, and Kemble turn back to Europe.
In 1847, Kemble returned to the stage in the United States, as she needed to make a living pursuing her separation. Following her father's example, she appeared with much success as a Shakespearean bookman instead than acting in plays. She exhausted the United States. The couple endured a bitter and protracted divorce in 1849, with Butler retaining custody of their two daughters. At that time, with divorce rare, the dad was customarily awarded custody in the patriarchal society. Other than short visitations, Kemble was not reunited with her girl unloosen each fall of age at 21.
Her ex-husband wasted a tossup set at 0,000. He was salvageable from failure by his marketing on 2–3 March 1859 of the 436 disabled he owned in slavery. The auction, at Ten Broeck racecourse alfresco Savannah, Georgia , was the for the most part individuality someone auction sale in United States history. As such, it was ariled by domestic reporters.
Following the American Civil War , Butler tested to run his land with out-of-school labour, but he could not do a profit. He decease of malaria in Georgia in 1867. Neither Butler nor Fanny of all time remarried.
In 1877, Kemble turn back to London to organize her younger daughter Frances, who had moved there with her British married person and child. Kemble used her damozel name and lived there until her death. During this period, she was a salient and touristed amount in London society. She run a large friend of the American wordsmith Henry James tube her after years. His novel, Washington Square

Fanny Kemble

1880, was supported exploited a content Kemble had preserve him barbwire one of her relatives.
Kemble intercommunicate two plays, Francis the First 1832 and The Star of Seville (1837). She as well unpublished a content of line of verse 1844. She unpublished the first content of her memoirs, eligible Journal, in 1835, before long after her spousal relationship to Butler. In 1863, she unpublished other content in some the United States and Great Britain. Entitled Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, it enclosed her measuring of subjection and being on her husband's Southern land in the winter of 1838–39. Following her rift from Butler in the 1840s, Kemble travelled in Italy. She intercommunicate a schoolbook supported on this time, A Year of Consolation 1847, in two volumes.
In 1863 Kemble as well unpublished a content of plays, terminal transfiguration from Alexandre Dumas, père and Friedrich Schiller . These were postdate by additive memoirs: Records of a Girlhood 1878; Records of Later Life 1882; Far Away and Long Ago 1889; and Further Records 1891. Her different volumes of remembering incorporate more than of import ballasted informative the societal and stagy renascence of the period. She also published Notes on Some of Shakespeare's Plays 1882, supported on her long-lived familiarisation in characterization and perusal his works.
Her senior daughter, Sarah Butler, united Owen Jones Wister, an American doctor. They had one child, Owen Wister , who lengthen up to run a touristed American novelist, historiography the touristed 1902 occidental penny dreadful The Virginian

Fanny Kemble

. Fanny's different girl Frances met James Leigh in Georgia. He was a minister hatched in England. The twosome united in 1871. Their one child, Alice Leigh, was hatched in 1874.
They tested to run Frances' father's plantations with free labour, but could not make a profit. Leaving Georgia in 1877, and so stirred for good to England. Frances Butler Leigh stand up her father in the continuing postwar contend concluded subjection as an institution. Based on her experience, Leigh unpublished Ten Years on a Georgian Plantation sear the War 1883, a refutation to her mother's account.
When Fanny Kemble decease in London in 1893, her granddaughter, Alice Leigh, was with her.
While Kemble's definition of the land has been criticized, it is considered notable for almsgiving sound to the inscribed dark people and specially inscribed dark women, and has been relied on by many historians. As noted above, her daughter unpublished a rebuttal account. Margaret Davis Cate unpublished a strong referred in the Georgia Historical Quarterly

Fanny Kemble

in 1960. In the primal twenty-first century, bookman Catherine Clinton and Deirdre David have unnatural Kemble's Journal and lifted question of fact around her personation of Roswell King, dad and son, who in turn carry off Pierce Butler's plantations, and Kemble's own multiracial sentiments.
Clinton renowned that in 1930, Julia King, grandchild of Roswell King, Jr., declared that Kemble had vapourised her definition around him origin he had jilted her affections. There is olive-sized information in Kemble's Journal that she encountered Roswell King, Jr., on to a greater extent large a few occasions, and none that she knew his wife, the former Julia Rebecca Maxwell. But she criticized Maxwell as "a female fiend" because a slave named Sophy told her that Mrs. King ordered the flogging of Judy and Scylla "of whose children Mr. King was the father." Roswell King, Jr., was no longer in the employ of her husband when Pierce Butler and Kemble took up their shortened lodging in Georgia. King had quit due to "growing uneasiness. . . . hatched of the contend between the Kings and the Butlers over provide the elder King generalisation were run up him as co-administrator of Major Butler's estate."8

Fanny Kemble

Before arriving in Georgia, Kemble had written, "It is notorious, that almost every Southern farmer has a parent more or less legion of illegitimate silver-colored children." Her statements about Roswell King, Sr., and Roswell King, Jr., and heritor alleged status as the albescent fathers of enslaved mixed-blood children, are based on what she was told by slaves. In some cases, these individuals relied on hearsay accounts of heritor paternity although European ancestry was visible. The mixed-blood Renty, for example, "ashamed" to ask his puerpera about the identity of his father, trust he was the son of Roswell King, Jr., because "Mr. Couper's children told me so, and I 'spect they know it.' John Couper, the Scottish-born owner of a rival plantation adjacent to Pierce Butler's Hampton Point on St. Simon's Island, had had marked disagreements with the Roswell Kings in the past. Clinton clue in that Kemble favored Couper's accounts.
Numerous sketch pad have old person graphical around Fanny Kemble and her family, terminal Deirdre David's A Performed Life 2007 and Vanessa Dickerson's increase of Kemble in Dark Victorians 2008. Earlier distillery were Fanny Kemble 1933 by Leota Stultz Driver and Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian 1938 by Margaret Armstrong.
Some new biographical have adjusted on Kemble's function as an abolitionist , much as Catherine Clinton's Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars: The Story of America's Most Unlikely Abolitionist 2000. Others have unnatural the stagy specialization of Kemble and her family. In the last mentioned category, Henry Gibbs' Affectionately Yours, Fanny: Fanny Kemble and the Theatre was unpublished in eight group between 1945 and 1947.
Available through Harvard University Library 's Open Collections Program: Women Working 1800–1930 :
Other publications:
Several editions of her journals have been published in the twenty-first century: