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.
Engraving of a bust of Katherine Philips by Michael Vander Gucht, frontispiece to her posthumous poems. The bust, in classical style, stands in an oval alcove on a pedestal engraved "ORINDA". Philips gazes into the distance, her hair in a loose bun with a single ringlet on each side; her low, draped neckline shows her breasts.
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
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
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...
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.
qtd. in
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Ariadne
Ariadne says she is a young lady, who has had an Inclination . . . for Scribling from my Childhood.
qtd. in
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, 1990.
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, 2016.
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, 1687.
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.
qtd. in
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press, 1987.
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. 26 Feb. 2006.
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...

Timeline

1641: Pierre Corneille published his classical...

Writing climate item

1641

Pierre Corneille published his classical tragedy Horace, which had been first performed the previous year.
Philips, Katherine. Collected Works. Editors Thomas, Patrick et al., Stump Cross Books, 1990–1993, 3 vols.
3: 119

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.
Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 25th ed., Akademische Druck, 1966.
476
Philips, Katherine. Collected Works. Editors Thomas, Patrick et al., Stump Cross Books, 1990–1993, 3 vols.
1: 82

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.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

1691: Gerard Langbaine published An Account of...

Writing climate item

1691

Gerard Langbaine published An Account of the English Dramatick Poets.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

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.
Buchanan, Dave. Augustan Women’s Verse Satire. University of Alberta, 1998.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Hughes, Derek. “The Masked Woman Revealed; or, the prostitute and the playwright in Aphra Behn criticism”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 2, 2000, pp. 149-64.
150

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 .
Evelyn, John. Numismata. Benjamin Tooke, 1697.
265

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 .
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
120
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

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.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
10: 371-2

Texts

Philips, Katherine. Collected Works. Editors Thomas, Patrick et al., Stump Cross Books, 1993, 3 vols.
Rochester, John Wilmot, second Earl of et al. Familiar Letters. 1st ed., Samuel Briscoe, 1697, 2 vols.
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. 1st ed., Bernard Lintott, 1705.
Philips, Katherine. Poems. 1st ed., Richard Marriott, 1664.
Philips, Katherine. Poems. 1st ed., Henry Herringman, 1667.
Corneille, Pierre. Pompey. Translator Philips, Katherine, 1st ed., 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.