author
Andrew Kippis
1725–1795
An English dissenting minister, educator, and biographer, he helped shape how eighteenth-century Britain remembered many of its leading figures. He is especially known for editing the second edition of Biographia Britannica and for writing a life of Captain James Cook.
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About the author
Born in Nottingham in 1725, Andrew Kippis was educated at the Northampton academy under Philip Doddridge and went on to become a prominent English nonconformist clergyman. He served congregations in Boston, Lincolnshire, and later in Westminster, while also building a reputation as a learned writer and teacher.
Kippis spent many years as a tutor in the Coward Trust academy at Hoxton and later at New College, Hackney. His interests ranged widely across literature, history, and public life, and his standing as a scholar was recognized by his election to the Society of Antiquaries in 1778 and the Royal Society in 1779.
Today he is remembered above all for his biographical work. He edited the enlarged second edition of Biographia Britannica, one of the great reference projects of its day, and he also wrote The Life of Captain James Cook, helping preserve the story of one of the eighteenth century’s most famous explorers. Kippis died in 1795.