The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 14. Katherine Philips
We have not as yet mentioned a poetess in this chapter, yet there is one belonging to it; one of the first women, indeed, to obtain the position in modern English literature. Very popular and highly esteemed in her own day, complimentarily referred to by Dryden and others and not seldom reprinted for a generation or so later, “the matchless Orinda,” as she was called in the coterie language of the time, has, perhaps, been better known to most readers by her nickname than by her works for nearly two centuries past. Her real maiden name was Katherine Fowler; she was born in London on New Year’s day, 1631; married at sixteen a Welshman named Philips and began to be known as a writer of verse about 1651; but, though a pirated edition of her poems appeared in 1664, shortly before her death, the first authorised one was published posthumously in 1667. She translated Corneille’s Pompée, and part of his Horace. But her poetical interest lies in a considerable number of miscellaneous poems, the best of which are in the unmistakable style of the group and mainly addressed to her women friends of the coterie—“Rosania” (Mary Aubrey), “Lucasia,” “Regina” (this, apparently, a real name) and the rest. There is no very great power in any of them, but the curious “magic music” of sound and echo and atmosphere survives in the pieces beginning, “Come my Lucasia, let us see,” “I did not love until this time,” “As men that are with visions graced,” “I have examined and do find”; nor, perhaps, in these only.