Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839

[1][2][3] While living in Philadelphia, Kemble became familiar with the abolitionist teachings of the Quakers and began to question the source of her husband's wealth.

[5] The Journal documents Kemble's initial experiences of appreciating aspects of plantation life with the exception of "the one small thing of 'the slavery'" and her growing horror with the system.

The tumult of the war will be forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery.

The book is a permanent and most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid, faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system, — its persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.In 1960, the historian Margaret Davis Cate published a "scathing critique" sympathetic to the plantation system and vilified Kemble's description of it in the Georgia Historical Quarterly.

"[7] The Journal inspired the one-woman show "Shame the Devil: An Audience with Fanny Kemble" by Ann Ludlum, which was produced in Brunswick, Georgia, in 2016.