KEMPE, MARGHERITA. - English mystic, b. at King’s Lynn (Norfolk) c. 1373, d. c. 1440.
Married c. 1393 to a wealthy fellow-citizen, she was the mother of fourteen children, but vain and ambitious until her failures led her back to God. Weeping over her past and in devotion to the Passion of Our Lord, she undertook great pilgrimages: to the Holy Land, where on her return she spent six months in Rome (1413–15), gathering first-hand information on the life of St Bridget; to Santiago de Compostela (1417), and later to Wilsnack and Aix-la-Chapelle (1433), often distressing her fellow-travellers with her uncontrollable tears and sobs. Suspected of hypocrisy and Lollardy, she was several times examined by the ecclesiastical authorities, but always emerged triumphant in her profession of the Catholic faith.
Unable to read or write, in 1436 she dictated with great candour the story of her life and mystical experiences to a priest; this book is the earliest English autobiography. Only fragments were known (published in 1510) until the owner of the sole manuscript, W. Butler-Bowden, produced a modernised edition, The Book of M. K. (London 1936; New York 1944). The scholarly edition (with the same title) was prepared by S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen ([Early English Text Society], 212), London 1940.