Philips, Katherine (1631–1664)

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Philips, Katherine (1631–1664)

Early English poet. Name variations: Catherine or Katharine; (pseudonym) Orinda. Born Katherine Fowler on January 1, 1631 (some sources cite 1632), in London; died of smallpox on June 22, 1664; daughter of John Fowler (a merchant) and Katherine Oxenbridge (whose father was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London); married James Philips (a Welsh royalist), in 1647; children: a son who died in infancy; daughter Katherine (who married Lewis Wogan of Boulston, Pembrokeshire).

Katherine Philips was born in London in 1631, the daughter of Katherine Oxenbridge , whose father was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London, and John Fowler, a merchant in Bucklersbury, London, who was a devout Presbyterian. Philips is said to have read through the Bible before she was four years old. She would later break with Presbyterian traditions in both religion and politics and become a royalist, an avid supporter of King Charles II and his church policy. At age eight, Philips was sent to a boarding school in Hackney where she began to write verse; she also met Mary Aubrey , the first of her close women friends. Aubrey, who influenced Philips' writing, would be referred to as M.A. in several of her poems.

At age 16, Katherine married her stepbrother, 54-year-old James Philips. (Following the death of her husband, Katherine Oxenbridge had married Hector Philips, father of James by a previous marriage.) At her home at the Priory, Cardigan, Katherine Philips instituted a Society of Friendship, a salon where literary companions discussed poetry and religion. Members were known by fanciful names: Philips became "Orinda," dubbed the "matchless Orinda" by her contemporaries; her husband James was "Antenor"; Mary Aubrey was Rosania; Anne Owen was Lucasia; Lady Margaret Cavendish was Policrite; and Sir Charles Cotterel, a master of ceremonies at the court of Charles II, was "Poliarchus." Philips was known for her intense female friendships, defined by her as "love refin'd and purg'd from all its dross."

In this milieu, Philips began circulating her poetry, which often celebrated or concerned her friendships and used the same poetic monikers. She had no intention, however, of seeking publication, convinced that it was a violation of feminine modesty. Within cultivated London, she became a literary darling. In 1659, Jeremy Taylor dedicated his "Discourse on the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship" to her, while others of importance praised her talent.

In 1662, Philips left for Dublin to oversee her husband's claim to certain Irish estates, and there she was encouraged by Robert Boyle, the earl of Orrery, to translate and adapt Corneille's Pompey (La Mort du Pompée) for the stage. Following an extremely successful production in 1663 at the Smock Alley Theater, it was published, to her horror, in Dublin and London. When she was warned of an imminent publication of a book of her verse in 1664, she wrote her friend Dorothy Osborne : "I must never show any face among any reasonable people again, for some most dishonest person hath got some collection of my poems as I hear, and hath delivered them to a printer who I hear is [set] upon putting them out and this hath so extremely disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely exposed and the belief that I believe the most part of the world are apt enough to believe that I connived at this ugly accident that I have been on the rack ever since I heard it." She managed to have the impending edition suppressed and a retraction of its publishing date printed in the London Intelligencer. Returning to London in March 1664 with a nearly completed translation of Corneille's Horace, Katherine Philips died abruptly of smallpox on June 22, age 33. Her poems were subsequently released posthumously.

The ambience of her group is finely detailed in Letters of Orinda to Poliarchus, published by Bernard Lintot in 1705 and 1709. Poems, By the Incomparable Mrs K.P. appeared surreptitiously in 1664, followed by an authentic edition in 1667. Selected Poems, edited with an appreciation by Louise Imogen Guiney , appeared in 1904. P.W. Souers' The Matchless Orinda was published in 1931.

Philips had two children, one of whom, Katherine, became the wife of Lewis Wogan of Boulston, Pembrokeshire. There is some speculation that the daughter may also have been known as Joan Philips , author of Female Poems on Separate Occasions, written under the pseudonym Ephelia. The verse is in the style of Katherine Philips.