Fanny Kemble -- three autobiographies, a book of poems, and a book of letters

Overview

This file includes: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839, Poems (1844), Records of a Girlhood, Records of Later Life, and Letters of Edward Fitzgerald to Fanny Kemble 1871-1883. According to Wikipedia: "Frances Anne Kemble (27 November 1809 - 15 January 1893), was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century . . . In 1834, she retired from the stage to marry an American, Pierce Butler, grandson of the Founding Father Pierce Butler, and heir to a large fortune founded on cotton, tobacco and rice... 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, 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... 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 during her later years. His novel Washington Square (1880) was based upon a story Fanny had told him concerning one of her relatives... Her various volumes of reminiscences contain much valuable material illuminating the social and dramatic history of the period. Her elder daughter Sarah married a doctor, Owen Jones Wister, and they had one child, Owen Wister (b. 1860), the popular American novelist and author of the 1902 western novel, The Virginian."

Read More