Philips, Katherine

Katherine Philips (née Fowler) (1632–1664) was a Royalist poet who primarily circulated her poems in manuscript, although after the pirated publication of her Poems in 1664 she authorized a print edition (published posthumously in 1667). She also translated two plays of Pierre Corneille’s, Pompey (performed in Dublin to much acclaim) and Horace, from French to English, and wrote letters that exemplified seventeenth-century epistolary style. Her writing demonstrates the ways that women writing in the war years integrated political concerns, deep interpersonal passions, and religious convictions. Where early readers saw Philips as “a modest poetess,” she now appears as an innovative poet, subtle political thinker, and queer ancestor, illuminating shifting critical trends as well as her own works.