Kemble family: History and Key Facts

Kemble is the name of a family of English actors, who reigned over the English stage for many decades.

By the Pop Culture Files editorial team•Updated September 29, 2026•2 min read•✓ Fact-checked

George Henry Harlow's Court for the Trial of Queen Katharine — George Henry Harlow · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Kemble is the name of a family of English actors, who reigned over the English stage for many decades. The most famous were Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) and her brother John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), the two eldest of the twelve children of Roger Kemble (1721–1802), a strolling player and manager of the Warwickshire Company of Comedians, who in 1753 married an actress, Sarah Ward. Roger Kemble was born in Hereford and was a grand-nephew of Father John Kemble, a recusant Catholic priest, who was hanged in that city in 1679. Three younger children of Roger, Stephen Kemble (1758–1822), Charles Kemble (1775–1854), and Elizabeth Whitlock (1761–1836), were also actors, while Ann Hatton was a novelist.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Kemble family by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.