KEMBLE (Frances Anne).
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39.
"A SMALL MASTERPIECE OF GENEROUS OUTRAGE"
A very good copy of a surprisingly scarce account of life in mid-nineteenth-century Georgia.
Frances Kemble’s (1809-1893) family owned a theatre and her mother and father were actors in their own right. Their fortunes wavered and with the thearte on the verge of collapse in 1829, Frances was encouraged to act. Her performances were so winning that the theatre’s foreclosure was delayed. She continued to act for some years, though disliked the work and as soon as she was able, left to concentrate on writing. Before she did so, she and her father embarked on a tour of the United States in 1832. In 1835 she published a two-volume edition of her diary which was critical of American manners and offended many as a result. She remained in American and married Pierce Butler, a Philadelphian who owned plantations in Georgia and North Carolina.
They spent the winter in 1838-39 in Georgia which was Kemble’s first exposure to slavery. She maintained her diary throughout and, despite adamant opposition from her husband, published it some 25 years later during the heart of the Civil War. ODNB describes it thus: “It is a small masterpiece of generous outrage, arguing from the amply and sympathetically documented details of what she had seen, to generalized indignation that such treatment could be tacitly encouraged by part of a civilized nation. Although it was deliberately not published in the American south, copies soon found their way there and scarcely increased admiration for the meddling of an outsider who expressed herself on what was regarded as an indigenous issue.”
Sabin, 37329.