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.
Connections
Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Education | Sarah, Lady Cowper | 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, 2002. 105 |
Family and Intimate relationships | Anne Wharton | AW
's father, Sir Henry Lee
of Ditchley Park, about four miles from Woodstock, Oxfordshire, died of smallpox before she was born. His family had connections with Elizabeth Cary (Lady Falkland)
, Lucy Hutchinson
, and Katherine Philips
. Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, 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 | Mills, Rebecca. "Thanks for that Elegant Defense": Polemical Prose and Poetry by Women in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford University, 2000. 152 |
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, 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, 1987. 182 |
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, 1715. 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 | 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... |
Timeline
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 finally crushed by defeat at the battle of Worcester; the future Charles II
became a fugitive.
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 the English Dramatick Poets.
1691
Robert Gould
published another misogynist satire, A Satyrical Epistle to the Female Author of a Poem Called Sylvia's Revenge.
1697
John Evelyn
included in his Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Ancient and Modern a list of women famed for writing: Margaret Cavendish
, Katherine Philips
, Aphra Behn
, Bathsua Makin
, and Mary Astell
.
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.