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.
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...
Textual Features
Mary Robinson
To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR
learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn
and Susanna Centlivre
as well...
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, 2006, pp. 1-14.
5n20
Textual Features
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
The Philips poem explicitly ranks friendship above marriage, since the latter relationship may be polluted by Lust, design, or some unworthy ends.
Philips, Katherine. Collected Works. Editors Thomas, Patrick et al., Stump Cross Books, 1990–1993, 3 vols.
1: 150
This use of Philips
by ESR
reinforces the perception of an...
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, 2006, pp. 1-14.
4
also take pains to create an ideal of female friendship, enforced with quotations from the poetry of Katherine Philips
....
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Jane Turell
of Massachusetts (a generation younger than ESR
, the daughter of her old admirer Benjamin Colman
) emulated Rowe so single-mindedly that Melanie Bigold
feels she became a kind of American Rowe. She...
Friends, Associates
Lady Rachel Russell
The family had various links with Katherine Philips
, and the famous preacher Jeremy Taylor
was chaplain at Golden Grove.
Intertextuality and Influence
Sappho
Sappho
's name was an honorific for women writers for generations. George Puttenham
may have been the first to use it to compliment a writing woman: in Parthienades, 1579, he said that Queen Elizabeth
Scott, Mary, and Gae Holladay. The Female Advocate. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1984.
iii
She looks farther into the past for examples than he does. Whereas Duncombe begins with Orinda (Katherine Philips
), MS
turns back to the Renaissance...
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, 2000.
152
She was a...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Thomas
As a child ET was later said to have been for ever a Scribling.
Curll, Edmund et al. “The Life of Corinna. Written by Herself”. Pylades and Corinna, 1731, p. iv - lxxx.
viii
The Life of Corinna, purporting to be written by a female friend, which prefaces the first volume of...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Thomas
These letters provide a vivid picture of ET's life: her cultured friends, her alertness to read and comment on new and old books (she and Gwinnett discuss Locke
, Malebranche
, Norris
, Astell
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
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, Mar. 2004, pp. 12-38.
35
Textual Production
Catharine Trotter
It was published by 30 January 1696, as written by a Young Lady, with a dedication to Lord Dorset
and a commendatory poem by Delarivier Manley
which described CT
as the heir to both...
