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.
Nothing is known of SLC
's education, but it must have been both religious and relatively advanced, to account for her wide and intellectually intense reading as an adult in history, philosophy, and theology.
Kugler, Anne. Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of Lady Sarah Cowper, 1644-1720. Stanford University Press.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, pp. 1-124.
21-2
Friends, Associates
Dorothy Osborne
DO
's sister-in-law Martha, Lady Giffard
, a historical writer and an early widow, lived permanently with the family. Sir William Temple employed the young Jonathan Swift
from 1689. DO
was a friend and correspondent...
Friends, Associates
Lady Rachel Russell
The family had various links with Katherine Philips
, and the famous preacher Jeremy Taylor
was chaplain at Golden Grove.
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Thomas
ET was personally acquainted with many cultivated women, for instance Sarah Hoadly
(a painter who had trained with Mary Beale
), and her cousin Anne Osborne
(the Clemena of her poetry).
Mills, Rebecca. "Thanks for that Elegant Defense": Polemical Prose and Poetry by Women in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford University.
152
She was a...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Finch
This volume (once owned by Edmund Gosse
) reproduces with very little revision nearly all the poems in the octavo, as well as adding fifty-five more. It also includes AF
's important prose preface, her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Tollet
ET
's untitled poem beginning Proud Monuments of Art! renown'd of old probably echoes a poem in Katherine Philips
's Pompey which begins with the same first two words.
Londry, Michael. “On the Use of First-Line Indices for Researching English Poetry of the Long Eighteenth Century, c. 1660-1830, with Special Reference to Women Poets”. The Library, Vol.
5
, No. 1, pp. 12-38.
35
Intertextuality and Influence
Aphra Behn
Behn's death, this elegy says, is a disaster for women's writing, for no other woman dares her Laurel wear.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press.
182
For a while it remained possible for women writers like Jane Barker
to claim descent...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catharine Trotter
It was published the same year, dedicated to Lord Halifax
. Like Fatal Friendship, it carried commendatory verses by Lady Piers
which situate Trotter as an heir to both Behn
and Philips
.
Intertextuality and Influence
Constantia Grierson
This poem is feeling and artless. Ah Lovly harmless shade Couldst thou but see / How much thy wretched mother mourns for thee. The closing couplet strongly suggests the end of Katherine Philips
's On...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Carter
Carter's poem To Miss Lynch claims (not for the only time) Katherine Philips
as the model for her own writing. Philips's spotless verse with genuine force exprest / The brightest passion of the human breast...
Intertextuality and Influence
Laetitia Pilkington
LP
was vividly aware of the literary handicap represented by her gender. But she was choosy about claiming influence. She decried Manley
, Haywood
, and Mary Barber
(whose poems, she says, would have been...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Wharton
Elizabeth Elstob
cited AW
's poetic achievement along with that of the far better-known Katherine Philips
and Anne Finch
.
Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King.
xxiv
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
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
....
Timeline
1641: Pierre Corneille published his classical...
Writing climate item
1641
Pierre Corneille
published his classical tragedyHorace, which had been first performed the previous year.
3 September 1651: Royalist hopes of a military victory were...
National or international item
3 September 1651
Royalist hopes of a military victory were finally crushed by defeat at the battle of Worcester; the future Charles II
became a fugitive.
1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...
Writing climate item
1656
Abraham Cowley
published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
1691: Gerard Langbaine published An Account of...
Writing climate item
1691
Gerard Langbaine
published An Account of the English Dramatick Poets.
1691: Robert Gould published another misogynist...
Writing climate item
1691
Robert Gould
published another misogynist satire, A Satyrical Epistle to the Female Author of a Poem Called Sylvia's Revenge.
1717: The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany...
Women writers item
1717
The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany entitled The Agreeable Variety by its female editor included Behn
, Philips
, Chudleigh
, and Finch
.
By May 1754: John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem,...
Building item
By May 1754
John Duncombe
published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.
Texts
Philips, Katherine. Collected Works. Editors Thomas, Patrick et al., Stump Cross Books, 1993.
John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, et al. Familiar Letters. Samuel Briscoe, 1697.
Corneille, Pierre. Horace. Translators Philips, Katherine and Sir John Denham, Henry Herringman, 1669.
Philips, Katherine. “Introduction and Textual Notes”. The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda, Volume I: The Poems, edited by Patrick Thomas, Stump Cross Books, 1990, pp. 1-68.
Philips, Katherine. “Introduction and Textual Notes”. The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda, Volume II: The Letters, edited by Patrick Thomas, Stump Cross Books, 1992, p. xi - xviii.
Philips, Katherine. “Introduction and Textual Notes”. The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda, Volume III: The Translations, edited by Germaine Greer and R. Little, Stump Cross Books, 1993, p. ix - xxi.
Philips, Katherine. Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus. Bernard Lintott, 1705.
Philips, Katherine. Poems. Richard Marriott, 1664.
Philips, Katherine. Poems. Henry Herringman, 1667.
Corneille, Pierre. Pompey. Translator Philips, Katherine, Samuel Dancer, 1663.
Philips, Katherine, and James Greenwood. “The Virgin”. The Virgin Muse, T. Varnam and F. Osborne, 1717.
Philips, Katherine, and William Cartwright. “To the most Ingenious and Virtuous Gentleman Mr. William Cartwright, my much valued Friend”. Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems, First, Humphrey Moseley, 1651.
