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Author: Kempe, Alfred John

Biography:

KEMPE, Alfred John (1784-1846: findmypast.com)

He was born in London on June 4, 1784, son of Ann (Arrow) and John Kempe, an official at the Royal Mint. He and his sister Anna Eliza (1790-1883) were educated at home by French refugees; both were interested in literature and the arts, as their later careers demonstrated. She studied painting, married first (in 1818) Charles Alfred Stothard who was a son of the painter Thomas Stothard and then, after his death, the clergyman poet Edward Atkyns Bray (q.v.). In her second marriage she began a successful career as a writer of fiction. Kempe himself worked for a time at the Mint but found his métier as a reviewer and contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine. Stothard introduced him to antiquarian research, which became his area of expertise. In 1808 he had married Mary Prior (d 1864), with whom he had eleven children. He collaborated with his sister in completing Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain (1817-32) and published, under his own name, bibliographical and historical studies that earned him a place as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1828. He died at his home on the Fulham Road in London and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Fulham, as was Anna Eliza Bray in due course. A monument commemorates the two of them as "Brother and Sister." (findmypast.com 5 Apr. 2021; ODNB 5 Apr. 2021; ancestry.com 5 Apr. 2021) 

 

Other Names:

  • A. J. Kempe
 

Books written (1):

London: [no publisher: printed "for the Author"; sold by Winchester], 1806