Description

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation: 1838–1839 is Kemble's searing, day-by-day account of life on her husband Pierce Butler's Sea Island estates. Mixing the immediacy of a stage professional's scene-painting with the moral ledger of a reformer, she records housing, rations, childbirth, illness, overseer violence, and the economics of Sea Island cotton. Part travel writing, part abolitionist testimony, the journal's dialogic sketches and statistical notations situate it within women's life-writing and antebellum antislavery literature, while its candid self-scrutiny exposes the blind spots of an elite British observer. Daughter of the famed Kemble theatrical dynasty, Fanny Kemble married American heir Pierce Butler in 1834 and reluctantly wintered on his Georgia plantations in 1838–39. The experience shattered her marriage and transformed her politics. Originally composed as letters, the journal was published in 1863 in London to influence British opinion against Confederate slavery and to explain her estrangement. Scholars and general readers alike will value this book for its granular detail and its anguished, self-interrogating voice. Read it alongside slave narratives, legal documents, and plantation records; read it, above all, to witness conscience confronting the machinery of bondage.

Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.