Frances Anne Kemble was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century.

Youth and acting career

A member of the famous Kemble theatrical family, Fanny was the oldest daughter of actor Charles Kemble and Maria Theresa Kembble, and a niece of noted tragedienne Sarah Siddons and of the famous actor John Philip Kemble. Her younger sister was opera singer Adelaide Kemble. Fanny was born in London, and educated chiefly in France.

On 26 October 1829, Fanny Kemble first appeared on the stage as Juliet at Covent Garden. Her attractive personality at once made her a great favorite, her popularity enabling her father to recoup his losses as a manager. She played all the principal women's parts, notably Portia, Beatrice and Lady Teazle, but perhaps her greatest role, not as a lead part, was specially written for her when she played Julia in James Sheridan Knowles' The Hunchback.

Marriage and divorce

In 1832, she accompanied her father on a theatrical tour of the U.S. While in Boston in 1833, she journeyed out to Quincy

Quincy, Massachusetts

Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...

 to witness the revolutionary technology of the first commercial railroad in the United States. She described her visit to the Granite Railway

Granite Railway

-References:** privately printed for The Granite Railway Company, 1926.* Scholes, Robert E. , .******Dutton, E.P. Published 1867. A good map of roads and rail lines around Quincy and Milton including the Granite Railroad.* * *...

 in her journal, as seen in the external link provided by the Friends of the Blue Hills.

In 1834, she retired from the stage to marry an American, Pierce Butler, grandson of the Founding Father Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler was a soldier, planter, and statesman, recognized as one of United States' Founding Fathers. He represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress, the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Senate...

, and heir to a large fortune founded on cotton, tobacco and rice. When the couple married, he was not a slaveholder, but by the time their two daughters, Sarah and Frances were born, Pierce Butler had inherited his grandfather's Sea Island

Sea Island, Georgia

Sea Island is an affluent resort island located in the barrier islands just off the Atlantic coast of southern Georgia in the United States. The resort complex is located in an unincorporated Glynn County....

 plantations and the several hundred slaves who worked them. Fanny accompanied him to Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

 during the winter of 1838-39, and was shocked by the conditions of the slaves and their treatment. She tried to better their conditions and complained to her husband about slavery. When she left his plantations in the spring of 1839, debates about slavery and marital tensions continued. The couple were divorced in 1849, with Butler keeping custody of the two daughters until they came of age. Fanny was reunited with each of her girls when they turned 21.

In 1847, Fanny returned to the stage. This was due more to a need to find a way to support herself following her separation and eventual divorce from Butler than to any real interest in acting. Later, following her father's example, Fanny Kemble appeared with much success as a Shakespearean reader, touring from Massachusetts to Michigan, from Chicago to Washington, winning new audiences to the Bard.

Butler squandered a fortune estimated at $700,000, but was saved from bankruptcy by the March 2–3, 1859 sale of his 436 slaves at Ten Broeck racetrack, outside Savannah, Georgia—the largest single slave auction in American history. Following the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, he tried to make his plantations profitable with free labor, but was unsuccessful. Butler died in Georgia, of malaria, in 1867. Neither he nor Fanny ever remarried.

Anti-slavery activism and controversy

She kept a diary about her life on the Georgia plantation, which was circulated among abolitionists prior to the American Civil War, and was published both in England and the United States once the war broke out. She continued to be outspoken on the subject of slavery, and often donated money from her readings to charitable causes.

In Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, published in 1863, Kemble wrote, "I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and the evils of this frightful institution."

However, Kemble was not necessarily what she seemed. In 1930 Julia King claimed that Kemble's allegations about her grandfather Roswell King's mistreatment of slaves were false, and that Kemble, enamored of Mr. King, intentionally lied because he declined to return her affections (Kemble and Clinton 15-16; Julia King to ____, 24 October 1930). Historian Margaret Davis Cate maintained that Kemble had deliberately introduced deceptive content in her journal to enhance its dramatic appeal, thus undermining its credibility as a source of factual information (Kemble and Clinton 16).

Kemble's indictment of slavery did not preclude her own racist attitudes (Dickerson 28). She thought of slaves as filthy animals or "untrained savages" prone to laziness and stupidity. She disliked "the ignoble and ugly Negro type," their "coarse woolly hair" and the "displeasing conformation" of adult black faces with their flat noses and "white grinders," even going so far as to compare one of the black boatmen to "a large quadruped of the ape species" (David 162).

Later life

In 1877, Fanny returned to England, where she lived using her maiden name till her death. During this period, Fanny Kemble was a prominent and popular figure in the social life of London. She became a great friend of, and inspiration for, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 during her later years. His novel Washington Square

Washington Square (novel)

Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father...

(1880) was based upon a story Fanny had told him concerning one of her relatives.

Besides her plays, Francis the First (1832), The Star of Seville (1837), Fanny Kemble published a volume of poems (1844), and an Italian travel book entitled A Year of Consolation (1847). She published the first volume of her memoirs, entitled Journal, in 1835. In 1863, another volume of memoirs was published, entitled Journal of Residence on a Georgian Plantation, which dealt with life on her husband's southern plantation. In 1863 she also published a volume of plays, including translations from Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

 and Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

. These were followed by Records of a Girlhood (1878), Records of Later Life (1882), Notes on Some of Shakespeare's Plays (1882), Far Away and Long Ago (1889), and Further Records (1891). Her various volumes of reminiscences contain much valuable material illuminating the social and dramatic history of the period.

Her older daughter Sarah married a doctor, Owen Jones Wister, and they had one child, Owen Wister

Owen Wister

Owen Wister was an American writer and "father" of western fiction.-Early life:Owen Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in Germantown, a well-known neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician, one of a long line of...

. The younger Wister grew up to become a popular American novelist and author of the 1902

1902 in literature

The year 1902 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* April - Mark Twain purchases a home in Terrytown, New York.* June 4 - Mark Twain receives an honorary doctorate of literature degree from the University of Missouri....

 western novel, The Virginian

The Virginian (novel)

This page is about the novel, for other uses see The Virginian .The Virginian is a pioneering 1902 novel set in the Wild West by the American author Owen Wister...

.

Fanny's other daughter Frances defended her father in a rebuttal to her mother's journal, entitled Ten Years on a Georgian Plantation since the War (1883). In Georgia, she met British-born minister James Leigh, and the couple married in 1871. They tried to make her late father's plantations profitable with free labor, but were unsuccessful, and moved permanently to England in 1877. The couple had one daughter, Alice (b. 1874), who was with her grandmother Fanny when she died in England in 1893.

Biographies

Numerous books have been written about Fanny Kemble and her family, including Fanny Kemble by Leota Stultz Driver (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1933) and Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian by Margaret Armstrong (The Macmillan Company, 1938). Many have focused on her role as an abolitionist, others on the theatrical careers of Fanny and her family. In the latter category, Henry Gibbs' Affectionately Yours, Fanny: Fanny Kemble and the Theatre (Jarrolds, London) saw eight editions published in English between 1945 and 1947.

Publications

Available through Harvard University Library

Harvard University Library

The Harvard University Library system comprises about 90 libraries, with more than 16 million volumes. It is the oldest library system in the United States, the largest academic and the largest private library system in the world...

's Open Collections Program: Women Working 1800-1930:

• Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. New York: Harper & Bros., 1863, ISBN 0-8203-0707-6.
• Record of a Girlhood. London: R. Bentley and Son, 1878.
• Records of Later Life. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1882.
• Further Records, 1848-1883: a series of letters. London: R. Bentley and Son, 1890.

Other publications:

• Francis the First, a drama (London, 1832; New York, 1833)
• Journal (2 vols., London, 1835; Philadelphia and Boston, 1835)
• The Star of Seville, a drama (London and New York, 1837)
• Poems (London and Philadelphia, 1844; Boston, 1859)
• A Year of Consolation, a book of Italian travel (2 vols., London and New York, 1847)
• Plays, including translations from Dumas and Schiller (London, 1863)
• Notes on some of Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1882)
• Far Away and Long Ago (1889)

External links

• Friends of the Blue Hills Journal of Fanny Kemble
• Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870–1930, Fanny Kemble (1809-1893). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Fanny Kemble.
• Enslavement:The True Story of Fanny Kemble - 1999 - fictionalized made-for-TV movie based on Fanny Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. (ISBN 0-8203-0707-6)
• Fanny Kemble bio in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• People & Events:Fanny Kemble and Pierce Butler:1806 - 1893 at pbs.org.
• The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor commemoration of her birthday on Nov. 27.