Blackwell Reference Online

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She's the queen of poets, whosoer's the king.Sir William Temple, 1664The glory of our Sex, envy of men.Philo-Philippa, 1667In her own lifetime, Katherine Philips (1632–64) was a well-known member of the British literary ‘scene’. When she was 19 a poem by her was printed as the first of 54 prefatory poems in William Cartwright's Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, With other Poems … The Ayres and Songs set by Mr. Henry Lawes (1651). In the same year her fellow Welsh poet Henry Vaughan included in his Olor Iscanus a poem ‘To the most Excellently accomplish'd Mrs. K. Philips’, in which he asserts that ‘No Lawrel growes, but for [her] Brow’ (1. 44). After the Restoration Philips's writing began to appear in print with some regularity. In 1662 her poem welcoming Catherine of Braganza to England,‘To the Queens Majesty on her Happy Arrival’, was published on a broadside by the London bookseller Henry Herringman. Her translation of Pierre Corneille's heroic drama Pompey was performed at John Ogilby's Theatre Royal in Smock Alley, Dublin, in February 1663 and printed twice that spring – both times by John Crooke, king's printer in Dublin. In March 1663 Crooke printed a quarto edition for Samuel Dancer, who had a bookshop on Dublin's Castle Street, and in May he reprinted the play for sale at his own bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard in London. That spring, three of Philips's poems were published in ... log in or subscribe to read full text