Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Katherine Philips
-
Standard Name: Philips, Katherine
Birth Name: Katherine Fowler
Married Name: Katherine Philips
Pseudonym: Orinda
Pseudonym: The Incomparable Mrs K. P.
KP
, who wrote during the mid seventeenth century, may herself have valued her public more highly than her private ones. But she won lasting importance as a poet of passionate female friendship and as realising new possibilites in translation and drama. She was an acceptable role-model and an active inspiration and enabler for women writers of several generations, before her rediscovery in the twentieth century as an inspiration for women loving women.
This work listed MO
as one of its Women among the moderns eminent for poetry. Phillips, nephew and pupil of John Milton
, seems quite interested in the existence of women poets. Others in his...
Publishing
Elizabeth Richardson
The full title is A Ladies Legacie to her Daughters, In three Books, Composed of Prayers and Meditations, fitted for, severall times, and upon severall occasions, As also severall Prayers for each day in the...
Publishing
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
John Dunton
's The Athenian Mercury featured Platonick Love by Elizabeth Singer (later ESR
), a poem which very deliberately echoes Friendship by Katherine Philips
as well as treating favourite Philips themes.
Bigold, Melanie. “Elizabeth Rowe’s Fictional and Familiar Letters: Exemplarity, Enthusiasm, and the Production of Posthumous Meaning”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
29
, No. 1, pp. 1-14.
5n20
Publishing
Ephelia
The book was handsomely produced, having a decorated dedication page, and a frontispiece featuring an oval portrait (or fictitious portrait) of Ephelia, with a heraldic badge above the picture and a pedestal bearing her engraved...
Publishing
Elizabeth Carter
The Gentleman's Magazine printed EC
's On the foregoing verses. Inscrib'd to Miss L[yn]ch
of Canterbury, alongside a poem by Katherine Philips
, To Mrs. Mary Awbrey at parting.
Bigold, Melanie. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Trotter, Carter, and Rowe.
Author summary
Ephelia
The Restoration user of the name Ephelia
was a remarkably assured, forceful, and accomplished poet (as well as a playwright), although she left, outside her single printed collection (1679), only four poems extant: political broadsheets...
Literary responses
Margaret Cavendish
These verse eulogies or testimonials came from distinguished persons and institutions to whom she had presented copies of her work. It circulated widely: the Dutch poet Constantijn Huygens
owned one of her books.
Smith, Emma. Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. Oxford University Press.
92
During...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Tipper
The volume is further prefaced by six poems in ET
's praise (or seven, counting the English translation of the one in Latin), all written by men. John Hallum
says she excels Behn
and Philips
Literary responses
Martha Fowke
This notice compared Fowke to her advantage with both Orinda and Astrea (Katherine Philips
and Aphra Behn
), and added: When Love's thy Theme, no low Desire appears, / Chaste are thy Sighs, seraphick...
Literary responses
Sarah, Lady Piers
Thomas Colepeper
, who recorded SLP
's marriage, called her a great poetess.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She may well be one of the three Kentish women poets whom Anne Finch
celebrated (along with herself) in The Circuit of...
Literary responses
Lady Jane Cavendish
Thomas Lawrence
, in his elegy, aspires to inherit LJC
's poetic gift, by seizing her discarded mantle (as Elisha in the Bible did the prophet's mantle of Elijah). In view of recent critical debate...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah, Lady Cowper
SLC
's range of reference is apparently huge: to trace through these volumes the influences on her thinking would take long-term, focussed scholarly endeavour. She transcribed a couplet and elsewhere a complete poem by Mrs...
Intertextuality and Influence
Delarivier Manley
The Lost Lover is remembered for its satirised learned lady, Orinda (whose role, however, is slight). This Orinda has been interpreted (probably wrongly) as a portrait of Katherine Philips
, who had been famous under...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Rowe's early letters to Mrs Thynne, full of gossippy entertainment and anecdotal brilliance,
Bigold, Melanie. “Elizabeth Rowe’s Fictional and Familiar Letters: Exemplarity, Enthusiasm, and the Production of Posthumous Meaning”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
29
, No. 1, pp. 1-14.
4
also take pains to create an ideal of female friendship, enforced with quotations from the poetry of Katherine Philips
....
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Elstob
Begun in order to help the work of a female student, this work reiterates more strongly EE
's plea for opening the arena of scholarship to women. For examples of poetic practice she turns to...
