Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kempe, Margerie

by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford

KEMPE, MARGERIE (temp. incert.), religious writer, is entirely unknown except as the authoress of a small work which Tanner describes as written in the form of sermons preached by Christ to devout women of his following, and as resembling in style the works of ‘modern Quietists and Quakers.’ ‘A short Treatyse of Contemplacyon taught by the Lorde Jhesu Cryste, or taken out of the Boke of Margerie Kempe of Lyn,’ beginning ‘She desyred many Tymes that her Hede,’ was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in London, n.d. 4to, 4ff. The only known copy is preserved in the university library at Cambridge.

[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 452; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. i. 232, ed. Herbert; Graesse's Trésor de Livres, iv. 9.]

C. L. K.