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Fanny Kemble letter to Miss Patteson, 10 May 1885

Abstract Or Scope

Autograph manuscript letter with postmarked envelope from the actress and writer Fanny Kemble in London to Miss Patteson in Andover, 10 May, 1889. Kemble thanks Miss Patteson for sending photographs, mentioning that she particularly values one of Bishop Patteson. She says she is "glad Lord Coleridge thought Lenox (Mass.) pretty. It has always seemed to me a charming mountain village." Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble was a British actress, writer, and abolitionist. She was born into a theater family; her acting career spanned the years 1829-1868. Kemble acted to support herself, but she was most passionate about writing, and was an accomplished playwright, poet, and diarist. She married the Pierce Mease Butler, an American who subsequently inherited his family' plantations. After spending time in Georgia, Kemble became an abolitionist and later divorced her husband. In 1863, Kemble published her anti-slavery memoir, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, which is said to have influenced the British against supporting the Confederacy in the Civil War. Kemble's own family was divided on that issue, as her elder daughter sided with her mother, while her younger daughter returned to Georgia with her father. Frances Butler Leigh published Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War (1883) as a rebuttal to her mother's memoir. Kemble's success as a Shakespearean actress enabled her to buy a cottage in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her correspondent, Miss Patteson, is the daughter of Frances Duke Patteson, a niece of the poet Samuel Coleridge Taylor; the Lord Coleridge mentioned in the letter is John Duke Coleridge (1820-1894), the 2nd Lord Chief Justice of England. Bishop Patteson refers to Miss Patteson's sister, John Patteson (1827-1871), who became an Anglican martyr after being killed doing mission work in the Solomon Islands.

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