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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A Star before Hollywood, 28 Feb 2005
By A Customer
Few of us know much about the theatre of Georgian England, and this reviewer knows as little as any. The name of Kemble suggested only dim associations with the London stage of an earlier era and, as I recall, there is a street and a pub of that name in Covent Garden . However, we an live in an age dominated by celebrity, and for me the revelation of Rebecca Jenkins' beautifully written and engrossing book is that this began far earlier than most of us might realise, and that Fanny Kemble, the star subject of this biography was a true Celebrity before the term was used. Her picture was everywhere, her image was on mugs and headscarves, everything she did was fed by an eager press to an even more eager audience, and her performances gripped the London stage. She was a star, from the Kemble family, to whom stardom and the theatre was a way of being. Like many stars since, she then broke the mould. Her disastrous marriage to an American plantation owner, whom she subsequently, and to her intense disapproval, found to be a slave owner, and her consequent return to London and divorce, added that touch of chaos, drama and accident which characterises star lifestyles to this day. She was then, and would be now, a gift to the media, even if this was something she never sought or planned. Rebecca Jenkins writes with humour, wit and elegance, and is absolutely in control of her material. There has clearly been impeccable research, but this is far from a dry academic work. Those, like me, who know little of that time, |
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