Abolition and the Actress: Fanny Kemble's Evolving Views on Slavery and Gendered Exploitation in Labour and Trade

Abstract

Actress Fanny Kemble (1809-93) led a transatlantic existence throughout her adult life. As burgeoning star and hope of the Siddons/Kemble dynasty, she crossed from Liverpool to New York in 1832 to make her fortune on the American stage. She then forsook the stage to marry a Georgian slave owner. Her life entailed 15 further crossings on account of deeply embedded interests - both public and private - in Britain and the United States. This chapter analyses how her particular experiences as a female worker in the expanding international entertainment industry shaped her critique of the race and gender-based injustices underpinning slavery as she witnessed and recorded it on her husband's plantations. It argues that her Journal of Residence on a Georgian Plantation (1863) in its 25-year transatlantic journey from private memoir to public polemic, reveals a touring performer's unique understanding of global, including human, commodity trade. Show more