Fanny Kemble

Common card · No. 392867

Frances Anne Kemble (later Butler; 27 November 1809 – 15 January 1893) was an English actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-nineteenth century. She was a well-known and popular writer and abolitionist whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing, and works about the theatre. She lived for many years in the United States, primarily in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Lenox, Massachusetts. Kemble's "lasting historical importance...derives from the private journal she kept during her time in the Sea Islands" on her husband's plantations, where she wrote a journal documenting the conditions of the slaves on the plantation and her growing abolitionist feelings. She was also an early adopter of spoken word performances combined with music.

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