Fabulous Fanny Defeats the South The Story of Fanny Kemble

Did the publication of Fanny Kemble's journal really cause the Confederacy to lose the Civil War? Many in the south still say so. This novel about the exciting life of Fanny Kemble, Fabulous Fanny, as newspapers dubbed her, begins in 1829 when her theatrical family put the untrained nineteen year old Fanny on stage as Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in an attempt to make enough money to save London's Covent Garden from bankruptcy. It follows her successful theatrical tour through the United States, a disastrous marriage to a wealthy slave owner, her nervous breakdown and recovery, her successful return to the stage, and why she decided to publish a book the Confederacy blamed for their defeat. Among Fanny's many friends were Washington Irving, Henry James, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, renowned artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and Thomas Sully, many of England's titled aristocrats, leading abolitionist in the United States and a few slaves.