From school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the nonconformist academy at Northampton, of which Dr Doddridge was then president. In 1746 Kippis became minister of a church at Boston; in 1750 he removed to Dorking in Surrey; and in 1753 he became pastor of a Presbyterian congregation at Westminster, where he remained till his death.
Kippis took a prominent part in the affairs of his church. From 1763 till 1784 he was classical and philological tutor in Coward's training college at Hoxton; and subsequently for some years at another institution of the same kind at Hackney. In 1778 he was elected a fellow of the Antiquarian Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1779.
Kippis was a very voluminous writer. He contributed largely to The Gentleman's Magazine, The Monthly Review and The Library; and he had a good deal to do with the establishment and conduct of The New Annual Register. He published also a number of sermons and occasional pamphlets; and he prefixed a life of the author to a collected edition of Dr Nathaniel Lardner's Works (1788). He wrote a life of Dr Doddridge, which is prefixed to Doddridge's Exposition of the New Testament (1792). His chief work is his edition of the Biographia Britannica, of which, however, he only lived to publish 5 vols. (folio, 1778-1793). In this work he had the assistance of Dr Towers. See notice by A Rees, D.D., in The New Annual Register for 1795.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.