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.
JW
surveys the field diligently from the sixteenth century onwards. She insists in principle, however, that no artistic talent in a woman justifies the neglect of even the smallest act of domestic duty.
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.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, pp. 1-124.
21-2
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
Textual Production
Elizabeth Walker
She also reversed this volume and began under a different title at the other end (a custom not uncommon when books and paper were scarce; Katherine Philips
, for instance, did the same thing with...
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
.
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...
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
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
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
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, 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
Scott, Mary, and Gae Holladay. The Female Advocate. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California.
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah, Lady Piers
SLP
begins here by celebrating Orinda, that is Katherine Philips
. Orinda, she says, rose like the dawn or the morning star, a Champion for her Sex, but with a modesty and gentleness appropriate...
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...
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.
105
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.
