She was born Margery Brunham in King's Lynn (then Bishop's Lynn), Norfolk, Kingdom of England and married at the age of 20 to a local man named John Kempe, with whom she had 14 children. Her father, John Brunham, was a merchant in Lynn, five-time mayor, Member of Parliament and merchant whose fortunes may have been negatively affected by downturns in the economy, especially in the wool trades, of the 1390s. The first record of her family appears with the mention of her grandfather, Ralph de Brunham in 1320 in the Red Register of Lynn and by 1340 had joined the Parliament of Lynn

Following the birth of her first child, Margery fell ill and feared for her life. After a failed confession that resulted in a bout of self-described "madness," Margery Kempe claimed to have had a vision that called her to leave aside the "vanities" of this world. Having for many weeks railed against her family, and friends, Kempe reports that she saw a vision of Jesus Christ at her bedside, asking her "Daughter, why hast thou forsaken Me, and I forsook never thee?" From that point forward, Kempe undertook two failed domestic businesses ... a brewery and a grain mill ... both common home-based businesses for medieval women.

Though she had tried to be more devout after her vision, she was tempted by sexual pleasures and social jealousy for some years. Eventually turning away from what she interpreted as the effect of worldly pride in her vocational choices, Kempe dedicated herself completely to the spiritual calling that she felt her earlier vision required. Striving to live a life of commitment to God, Kempe negotiated a celibate marriage with her husband, and began to make pilgrimages around Europe to holy sites ... including Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela. The stories surrounding these travels are what eventually comprised much of her Book, although a final section includes a series of prayers. The spiritual focus of her Book is on the mystical conversations she conducts with Christ for more than forty years.

From 1413 to 1420, Margery also visited important sites and people in England, including Philip Repyngdon the Bishop of Lincoln, Henry Chichele the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Julian of Norwich. She also went to Rome, where she stayed at the Venerable English College in 1416. Her thoughts concerning these trips and her revelatory experiences make up much of her book, but a key focus is also her persecution by civil and religious leaders. The last section of her book deals with a journey in the 1430s to Norway and the Holy Roman Empire, where she visited the Holy Blood of Wilsnack. Two different scribes did the writing for Margery, under her strict supervision.

Part of Margery Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature of her book: it is the best insight available that points to a female, middle class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is admittedly unusual among the more traditional holy exemplars of her time, such as Julian of Norwich. Margery, in fact, described her visit to Julian in her anchorhold in Norwich, and describes how they together discussed Margery's visions as to their orthodoxy, deciding that because they led to charity, they were of the Holy Spirit.

Though Kempe is often depicted as an "oddity" or even a "madwoman," recent scholarship on vernacular theologies and popular practices of piety suggest she was not, perhaps, as odd as she appears. Rather than being the ramblings of a madwoman, her Book is revealed as a carefully-constructed spiritual and social commentary. As Swanson (2003) explains, in an imprecise date in the 1420s, a man took up the task of writing down the life of this then little-known Norfolk woman, and although he died before completing the task, the script was continued by another scribe. The outcome was The Book of Margery Kempe.Along the time Margery began dictating her book, John Kempe, her husband, took a fatal fall and she returned to Lynn to be his nursemaid. Soon after he and her son both died. Her final travel was to Danzig with her daughter-in-law.

Her autobiography begins with "the onset of her spiritual quest, her recovery from the ghostly aftermath of her first child-bearing" (Swanson, 2003, p. 142). There is no firm evidence that Margery Kempe could herself read or write, but Leyser notes how religious culture was informed by texts, as was that of her more well-known contemporary Julian of Norwich, noting how there is some evidence that the Incendium Amoris by Richard Rolle influenced Margery Kempe; Walter Hilton has been cited as another possible influence on Kempe. Among other books that Margery had read to her were, repeatedly, the Revelationes of Birgitta of Sweden and, in fact, her pilgrimages carefully copy those of that married saint, who had had eight children.

Kempe and her Book are also significant because they record the tension in late medieval England between institutional orthodoxy and increasingly public modes of religious dissent, especially those of the Lollards. Throughout her spiritual career, Kempe's adherence to the teachings of the institutional Church is challenged by both church and civil authorities, most notably the Bishop of Lincoln and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, who acted rigorously against heresy, enacting laws that forbade allowing women to preach, for example.

Kempe was tried several times for such illegal acts as allegedly teaching and preaching on scripture and faith in public, and wearing white clothes (interpreted as hypocrisy on the part of a married woman). She proved her orthodoxy in each case.

In the 15th century, a pamphlet was published which represented Kempe as an anchoress, and which stripped out of her "Book" any potentially heterodoxical thought and dissenting behaviour. Because of this, scholars believed that she was a vowed religious holy woman, like Julian of Norwich, and were surprised to encounter the psychologically and spiritually complex woman described in the "Book."

In 1438, the year her book is known to have been completed, a Margeria Kempe, who may have been Margery Kempe, was admitted to the Trinity Guild of Lynn.

The last record of her is in the city of Lynn in 1438, and it is not positively known when and where she died. Her book remained essentially lost until a manuscript was found by Hope Emily Allen in the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family in Lancashire in 1934.

Kempe is honored in the Church of England on November 9 and in the Episcopal Church together with Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton on September 28.

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic and anchorite, a member of the religious community who chose to live in seclusion that generally lived in cells adjoining the church wall. According to her own accounts, Kempe visited Julian and stayed for several days; she was especially eager to obtain Julian's approval for the "very many holy speeches and converse with our Lord...also the many wonderful revelations, which she described to the anchoress to find out if there was any deception in them. For the anchoress was expert in such things and could give good advice." Evidently, Julian approved of Margery's revelations, or at least did not denounce them as false, giving Kempe her most credible source that her religiosity was genuine. However, Julian does instruct and caution Kempe to "measure these experiences according to the worship they accrue to God and the profit to her fellow Christians." Julian is also the one to justify and confirm that Kemp's tears are physical evidence of the Holy Spirit in soul. At the end of their discussion, Julian finally encourages Kempe to " Set all your trust in God and fear not the language of the world."

During the fourteenth century, the task of interpreting the Bible and God through the written Word was restricted to men; to interpret God through the senses and the body became the domain of women, primarily women mystics, especially in the late Middle Ages. Three classical ways in which mystics directly experience God: first, bodily visions, meaning was aware of them with her senses...sight, sound, or others; second, ghostly visions, such as spiritual visions and sayings that were directly imparted to her soul; and lastly, intellectual enlightenment, where her mind came into a new understanding of God.

In the 790s it was stated that it was a universally acknowledged truth that women could not travel without coming into contact with men. For women vowed to a religious life this was impermissible, therefore nuns had to abstain from pilgrimage. While women not vowed to religion faced the same implications, the religious woman was supposed to be aware of her weaknesses, and accept the restultant constraints.

Both spouses had equal rights over each other's body, so neither was allowed to retire to religious life, take a vow of chastity, or go on a crusade or a pilgrimage without the willing consent of the other

One of the reasons that motivated Margery to go Pilgrimage was the translation of Birgitta's Revelations into English. This work promotes the purchase of indulgences, pieces of paper declaring the pardoning of purgatorial time owed due to sins by the Church. Margery Kempe went on many pilgrimages and has been acknowledged for purchasing these pardons on behalf of herself, friends, enemies, and the souls trapped in Purgatory