Anna Eliza Bray (born Kempe, afterwards Stothard; 25 December 1790 – 21 January 1883) was an English historical novelist. She also wrote several works of non-fiction. Biography Anna Eliza Kempe was born in the parish of Newington, Surrey on 25 December 1790, to John Kempe, a bullion porter in the Royal Mint, and Ann, daughter of James Arrow of Westminster. Kempe planned to be an actress, and her public appearance at the Bath Theatre was duly announced for 27 May 1815. However, she caught a severe cold on her journey, which prevented her appearance, and the opportunity was lost. In February 1818, she married Charles Alfred Stothard, son of the noted painter Thomas Stothard R. A. They travelled to France, and her first work consisted of Letters written during a Tour in Normandy, Brittany, &c., in 1818. As an artist, her husband was devoted to illustrating the sculptured monuments of Great Britain, but on 28 May 1821 he fell off a ladder and died in St Andrew's Church, Bere Ferrers, Devon, while collecting materials for his work The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain. She had one child by him, a daughter (born 29 June 1821, died 2 February 1822). In 1823 she produced a memoir of her late husband and undertook to complete the book he had left unfinished, with the aid of her brother Alfred John Kempe. She eventually did so and the work appeared in 1832. She left the original drawings of his great work to the British Museum on her death. Many years later she provided the Gentleman's Magazine and Blackwood's Magazine with reminiscences of her father-in-law, Thomas Stothard, R. A. These were afterwards (1851) expanded into a life of that artist. A year or two after Stothard died, Anna Eliza married Edward Atkyns Bray, Vicar of Tavistock. She then began writing historical novels, and from 1826 to 1874 produced at least a dozen. Some, such as The Talba, or the Moor of Portugal (1830) deal with foreign life, but her most popular ones revived the principal families of the counties of Devon and Cornwall, such as the Trelawneys of Trelawne, the Pomeroys, and the Courtenays of Walreddon. They proved so popular that a set of ten volumes by Longmans appeared in 1845–1846 and was reprinted by Chapman & Hall as late as 1884. While she was living in Tavistock, Bray discovered and took up a young