BRAY, Mrs. ANNA ELIZA, an authoress, is daughter of the late John Kempe, Esq., of the New Kent Road, Surrey, and was b. towards the end of last century. At an early age she showed much of the imaginative faculty, and a taste for design, which latter brought her the acquaintance of the celebrated Mr. Stothard, R.A. From Sloth ard she took lessons in drawing; and in Feb., 1818, married his second son. Charles Alfred Stothard, also an artist, and author of a well-known work entitled The Monu litat Effigies of Great Britain, select«1 from our Cathedrals and Churches, etc. In July, 1818, she accompanied her husband to France. Their tour and residence in France lasted until about the middle of Nov. in the same year; and airs. Stoth ard wrote an agreeable and lively account of her first foreign experiences, under the title of Letters written during a Thur through _Normandy, Brittany, and other parts of France, in 1818, with Numerous Engran:ngs after Drawings by C. Stothard, F.S.A. (Load. 1820, 4to). Subsequently, Mrs. Stothard accompanied her husband on a similar tour in the Netherlands. In v 1821, however, she had the severe misfortune to lose her husband, who was killed by falling from a ladder. In 1823, Mrs. Stothard wrote a life of her husband. entitled Memoirs, including Journals, Letters, Papers, and Antiqua rian Tracts of the late C. A. Stothard. with Connective _Notices of his Life, and some Account of a Journey in the Netherlands. Distress of mind brought on ill health, and Mrs. Stothard suffered from an affection of the eyes, which obliged her to give up literary labor altogether for more than two years. In 1825, she married the Rev. E. A. Bray,
vicar of Tavistoche; and in the following year published a historical romance entitled De Foi.r, which she had begun during her first husband's lifetime. The idea of this romance was conceived during the tour in Normandy; and similarly, that of her second romance, The TT'hite Hoods, during her tour in the Low Countries. This was published in 1828. and was followed by The Protestant, also in 1828: Fitz of Fitz-lbrd, a Legend of Devon (1830); The rebel, or Moor of Portugal (1830); Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak, a Le gend of Devon (1834); Trelawny of Treharne, or the Propheey, a Legend of Cornwall (1837); Trials of the Heart (1839); Henry De Pomeroy (1842); and Coartenay of Walreddon, a Romance of the Wed (18-44). A collective edition of all these romances was published in ten volumes in 1845, with a "general preface," in which the writer mentions the cir cumstances under which each was produced. Mrs. B. is also author of The Borders of the Tamar and the Tau (1836); The Mountains and Lakes of S'witzerland (1841); Trials of Domestic Life (3 vols., 1848): Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. (1851); A Peep at the Pixies (1854), and Hiindel, his Life. Personal and Professional, with Thoughts on Sacred Monde (1857). In July. 1857, Mrs. B.'s husband died; and in 1859, she published his Poet ical Remains. In 1870 appeared The Good St. Louis and his Times, and 772e Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes. In 1871 came Hartland Forest, a Legend of North Devon • in 1S73, Joan of Arc, and the Times of Charles 171., King of. France; and iu 1874, Roseteague.