Katherine Philips (1632–1664) was an English poet, known as 'the Matchless Orinda'. Her poems on friendship between women, addressed to companions under pastoral names, made her one of the most admired women writers of the seventeenth century.
London and Wales
Katherine Fowler was born in London on 1 January 1632, the daughter of a cloth merchant. She went to a girls' school in Hackney, and after her mother's remarriage moved to Wales.
In 1648, aged sixteen, she married James Philips, a Welsh landowner and Parliamentarian much older than she, and lived at Cardigan Priory.
The Society of Friendship
Philips created a circle of friends, the 'Society of Friendship', whose members she gave classical names: she was Orinda, her husband Antenor, her dearest friend Anne Owen Lucasia.
Her poems, circulated in manuscript, celebrate friendship as a spiritual union, especially between women, and were admired by Cowley, Vaughan and Dryden.
Pompey and death
In 1662–1663, in Dublin, she translated Pierre Corneille's tragedy La Mort de Pompée into English verse; her Pompey was staged with success in 1663, one of the first plays by a woman performed on the professional stage in Britain.
She died of smallpox in London on 22 June 1664, aged thirty-two. An authorised edition of her poems appeared in 1667.
Anecdotes
A pirated edition
In 1664 an unauthorised edition of her poems appeared. Philips protested in letters that she was mortified, and the printer withdrew it.
Her son's death
Her only son, Hector, died in infancy in 1655, and she wrote a moving epitaph for him.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Katherine Philips called Orinda?
It was the pastoral name she took in her circle of friends; admirers called her 'the Matchless Orinda'.
Who was Lucasia?
Anne Owen, her closest friend, to whom many of her poems are addressed.
What did she translate?
Corneille's tragedies La Mort de Pompée, staged in 1663, and part of Horace.