FRANCES

ANNE

See also:

• KEMBLE
• KEMBLE, JOHN MITCHELL (1807-1857)

KEMBLE (Fanny Kemble) (1809-1893)  , the actress and author, was Charles Kemble's elder daughter; she was born in London on the 27th of November 1809, and educated chiefly in France . She first appeared on the stage on the 25th of October 1829 as Juliet at Covent Garden . Her attractive personality at once made her a great favourite, 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 Julia in Sheridan Knowles's The Hunchback, especially written for her, was perhaps her greatest success . In 1832 she went with her father to America, and in 18J4 she married there a Southern planter, Pierce Butler . They were divorced in 1849 . In 1847 she returned to the stage, from which she had retired on her marriage, and later, following her father's example, appeared with much success as a Shakespearian reader . In 1877 she returned to England, where she lived—using her maiden name—till her death in London on the 15th of January 1893 . During this period Fanny Kemble was a prominent and popular figure in the social life of London . Besides her plays, Francis the First, unsuccessfully produced in 1832, The Star of Seville (1837), a volume of Poems (1844), and a book of Italian travel, A Year of Consolation (1847), she published a volume of her Journal in 1835, and in 1863 another (dealing with life on the Georgia plantation), and also a volume of Plays, including translations from Dumas and Schiller . 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 for the social and dramatic history of the period .