Katherine Philips

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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.
Black and white photo of a head-and-shoulders painting of Katherine Philips, looking directly at the viewer. She wears a necklace above a fashionably low neckline. Her hair looks shaved in front, but reaches in a bush of curls to her shoulder. Her name is written in italics below. This portrait, at Knole House, is the only likeness of her taken from life.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Ariadne
Ariadne says she is a young lady, who has had an Inclination . . . for Scribling from my Childhood.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Her preface invokes both Behn and Philips . The play was published in 1696. In...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB 's first hymn presents the world, as God creates and adorns it and pronounces it good, as a female body.
Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women’s Approach to Biblical Interpretation. Pickwick Publications.
49-50
She is also alert to female precedents. Her Verses on Mrs Rowe recall...
Textual Features Jane Barker
JB writes to one male friend (my Adopted Brother) on his approaching marriage, not to congratulate but to dissuade.
Barker, Jane. Poetical Recreations. Benjamin Crayle.
11
She reflects her intimate knowledge of the work of Katherine Philips and Abraham Cowley
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Barker
JB makes a pretence that the main story, the on-again off-again love of Bosvil and Galesia, is related by Galesia, in the garden at St Germain in about 1688, to someone called Lucasia (a name...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Barker
The book's concluding sequence begins with JB 's painful reflections (helped by her reading) on human misery and violence. Even swine, she says, will help each other, while men will egg on fighting boys until...
Textual Production Aphra Behn
This was a money-making venture at a time when the amalgamation of the two playhouses was making life hard for dramatists. Positioned on the cusp between Behn's stage career (which goes almost unmentioned here) and...
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...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Brereton
The book opens, like other posthumous collections, with a biographical memoir, in this case by JB 's daughter Charlotte, who reinforces the poet's own positioning of herself as Welsh, female, and modest. Envisaging potential hostility...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Textual Features Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's preliminary list of names suggests considerable research work: it includes several ancient or Anglo-Saxon women as well as Mary Astell , Anne Bacon , Katherine Chidley (as the pamphlet antagonist of Thomas Edwards

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: 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.

1691: Gerard Langbaine published An Account of...

Writing climate item

1691

Gerard Langbaine published An Account of the English Dramatick Poets.

1697: John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A...

Women writers item

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 .

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.