Daughter of actor and theater manager Charles Kemble and niece to the more famous John Philip Kemble and his elder sister Sarah Siddons, Francis Anne Kemble, better known as Fanny, was nevertheless a reluctant entrant into the profession of acting. She debuted as Shakespeare's Juliet in 1829 largely to help her father recoup his finances as manager of Covent Garden Theatre. Her performances were very well-received, and in subsequent roles she seems to have been equally successful in comic and tragic parts. In 1832, she left with her father for America to tour the New York and Philadelphia stages. In Philadelphia she met and married Pierce Mease Butler, heir to several Georgia plantations, who over time became the owner of hundreds of slaves. The marriage failed, partly because of Fanny's strong-minded abolitionist views and partly because of her husband's infidelities. Her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, recounting her observations on her husband's Sea Islands plantation, was written during 1838-9 but not published until 1863. Fanny Kemble remained in America for 20 years, and when she returned to England, she spent a few years appearing occasionally on London and provincial stages with limited success, faring better with dramatic readings from Shakespeare. She authored and translated plays, including her Francis the First (1832) and The Star of Seville (1837), and she published a number of volumes of journals, memoirs, and personal reflections as well as a volume of poetry. Her Notes on Some of Shakespeare's Plays was published in 1882.