THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
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.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1831-1839 ___ literary social travel
theatre slavery US
WEB TEXT LINKS
Georgian
Plantation
good extracts
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
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
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
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. |