Frances Anne Kemble was born into a theatrical family: she was the niece of John Philip Kemble, the actor-manager of Drury Lane, and the actress Mrs. Sarah Kemble Siddons and the daughter of Charles Kemble, actor-proprietor of Covent Garden. Her mother, the actress Marie Theresa De Camp Kemble, wishing to fit her for a higher milieu than the stage, had her educated in France. From childhood Fanny wrote compulsively, and at sixteen she completed Francis the First (1832), a verse-tragedy the actor William Charles Macready found "full of power, poetry and pathos." Its reception by audiences, however, was lukewarm. In 1829 her mother persuaded her to play in Romeo and Juliet in a bid to stave off the impending bankruptcy of her father's theater. Stubby figure, pock-marked countenance, and stage fright notwithstanding, her Juliet became the talk of London. Her admirers included Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Rogers, and the painter...