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Fanny Kemble: A Reluctant Celebrity
Fanny Kemble was born into the most famous acting dynasty of the London stage. Unlike her aunt, the legendary Sarah Siddons, Fanny did not want to be an actress. However, when her father, the actor-manager of Covent Garden, faced bankruptcy in 1829, her appearance as Juliet made her a star. Touring America in 1832, Fanny met Philadelphian Pierce Butler and left the stage for love. Once a wife, she learned, to her horror, that the Butler wealth came from a slave plantation in Georgia. Challenging the conventions of her day and her husband, she insisted on speaking out—and discovered that marriage could not contain the independent woman she had become.
498 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2005
About the author
Rebecca Jenkins
11 books7 followersAka Martha Ockley
Rebecca Jenkins is a novelist, biographer and social historian based in Teesdale, UK. She likes to write about anything that interests her - from 19th century theatre to Edwardian Olympics, through crime and theology in between. An early affection for the Scarlet Pimpernel led to her F R Jarrett mystery series, set in the early 1800s in the north east of England. A fascination with the origins of celebrity culture evolved into her biographical portrait of nineteenth-century actress, Fanny Kemble: The Reluctant Celebrity, which was short-listed for the 2005 Theatre Book Prize. Her book The First London Olympics, 1908 has been acclaimed as the definitive social and sporting history of the event illustrating the moment when American sporting science transformed the amateurism of the early modern Olympic movement. The First London Olympics, 1908 was long-listed for the William Hill 'Sport Book of the Year' Award in 2008. Rebecca has been known to blog and is a regular contributor to radio and TV.
Rebecca Jenkins is a novelist, biographer and social historian based in Teesdale, UK. She likes to write about anything that interests her - from 19th century theatre to Edwardian Olympics, through crime and theology in between. An early affection for the Scarlet Pimpernel led to her F R Jarrett mystery series, set in the early 1800s in the north east of England. A fascination with the origins of celebrity culture evolved into her biographical portrait of nineteenth-century actress, Fanny Kemble: The Reluctant Celebrity, which was short-listed for the 2005 Theatre Book Prize. Her book The First London Olympics, 1908 has been acclaimed as the definitive social and sporting history of the event illustrating the moment when American sporting science transformed the amateurism of the early modern Olympic movement. The First London Olympics, 1908 was long-listed for the William Hill 'Sport Book of the Year' Award in 2008. Rebecca has been known to blog and is a regular contributor to radio and TV.
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October 21, 2007http://nhw.livejournal.com/586452.html[return][return]I've given up. I was perturbed to realise that I had got half-way through the book and she was still only 20 years old; only when I looked at the author's website just now did I realise that this is in fact just the first of two volumes. There is almost no hint anywhere on the dustjacket that the book takes us only through the first thirty years of her life (her theatrical career and the early years of her disastrous marriage), leaving the other fifty yet to come. I feel cheated and angry.[return][return]I wouldn't mind if it was a good book; but it isn't. It is a simple summary of Fanny Kemble's own memoirs, with a vague attempt to throw in some historical context here and there, and the author's own rambling speculations as to the motives of Kemble and her relatives. The editing is uneven; the text repetitive; and the footnotes absolutely absurd on occasion.[return][return]On the few occasions that Jenkins allows us to hear Kemble's voice, the vastly better quality of her subject's writing style (and her welcome self-deprecation and humour, a startling contrast to Jenkins' treatment of her) really shines through.
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