Philips,Katherine

Abstract

Katherine Philips (1632–64), lyric poet and translator, was born in London into a family with strong Puritan and Parliamentarian connections. Born Katherine Fowler, she was the niece of both Sir John Oxenbridge, an intimate acquaintance of John Milton and Andrew Marvell, and Oliver St John, eminent Parliamentarian, kinsman of Oliver Cromwell, and future member of the Council of State. Educated at home until the age of eight, she then attended a Puritan boarding school in Hackney where she met Mary Aubrey and Mary Harvey, whose lifelong friendship exercised an important influence on her poetry and whose connections probably introduced her to London Royalist literary and musical circles in adulthood. At 15 she moved to Wales as a consequence of her mother's third marriage to a Pembrokeshire aristocrat, Sir Richard Phillipps, and within a year was married herself. Her husband, James Philips, was a supporter of the Parliamentarian and Cromwellian cause in the Civil Wars and Interregnum and served as member of parliament during the Commonwealth, Protectorate, and Restoration. Philips lived most of her adult life in the Welsh town of Cardigan, but made frequent trips to London when visiting friends or accompanying her husband on parliamentary business. She moved to Dublin for a year in 1662 where her translation of Pierre Corneille'sDeath of Pompeywas performed and published to much critical acclaim. The vast majority of her poetry before this period circulated in manuscript and was first printed in an apparently unauthorized octavo version by Richard Marriott in 1664 and then in Henry Herringman's grand posthumous folio edition ofPoems by the most deservedly admired Mrs Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda(1667), a venture orchestrated by her friends.