Commonplace Book: Fanny Kemble's Diary

I picked up on a whim at the library book sale corner Fanny Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838-9 (ed. J.A. Scott, Brown Thrasher, 1984) written by the famous English actress who married a wealthy Philadelphian, whose family fortune owed to massive southern plantations. She was a confirmed abolitionist even before her marriage, and published -- after her divorce and return to England -- a journal from the period of her residence on her husband's plantation, written in the form of letters to a friend. She utterly fascinates me: there's quite a lot of self-righteous pronouncements (very entertainingly when about Americans) and Victorian moralizing, and many of her pronouncements on race and culture/"civilization" make one very uncomfortable. But she has some very pointed observations on the effects of racism in the North, and, throughout -- her capacity for snark and sarcasm! It is amazing.
( Some choice extracts on American child-rearing, culture, and curfew (TW: food policing) )

But this bit I think is one of the most interesting, especially since Kemble was herself an actress, and from a family of Shakespearean actors. ( TW: racism and racist language )