Jennie Lee.

About Jennie Lee

Jennie Lee was a Victorian-era English stage actress, singer and dancer whose career was largely entwined with the title role in Jo, a melodrama her husband, John Pringle Burnett, wove around a relatively minor character from the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House. She made her stage debut in London at an early age and found success in New York and San Francisco not long afterwards. Lee may have first starred in Jo around 1874 during her tenure at San Francisco's California Theatre, but her real success came with the play's London debut on 22 February 1876 at the Globe Theatre in Newcastle Street. Jo ran for many months at the Globe and other London venues before embarking for several seasons on tours of the British Isles, a return to North America, tours of Australia and New Zealand and later revivals in Britain. Reduced circumstances over her final years forced Lee to seek assistance from an actor's pension fund subsidised in part by proceeds from Royal Command Performances.