KEMPE, MARGERY. — English mystic, born at Kings Lynn (Norfolk) about 1373, died about 1440.
Married about 1393 to a prosperous fellow townsman, she was the mother of 14 children, but vain and ambitious, until her failed undertakings taught her to return to God. Mourning her past and out of devotion to the Passion of Our Lord, she undertook great pilgrimages: to the Holy Land, stopping for six months in Rome on her return (1413–15), where she received direct information about the life of S. Brigida; to S. Giacomo di Compostella (1417); and later to Wilsnack and Aquisgrana (1433), often proving a nuisance to her fellow travelers because of her uncontrollable tears and loud sobs. Suspected of hypocrisy and Lollardism, she was examined several times by the ecclesiastical authorities, but she always emerged victorious in her profession of the Catholic faith.
Illiterate, in 1436 she related with great frankness the story of her life and mystical experiences to a priest, a book that is the oldest autobiography in English. Only some extracts of it were known (published in 1510). The owner of the sole manuscript, W. Butler-Bowden, prepared a modernized edition: The Book of M. K. (London 1936, New York 1944). The scholarly edition (under the same title) is the work of S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen (Early english text society, 212), London 1940.