Manuscript poems by Katherine Philips ('The Matchless Orinda'), c.1655, front cover and spine [image 1 of 141]

Description

Katherine Philips was one of the first women writers in Britain to gain professional and public recognition in her own right.

She was born on New Year's Day, 1632, and was brought up in a middle-class London puritan family. Following her father's death, her mother re-married twice, the third time to Sir Richard Phillipps of Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire. Katherine accompanied her mother to Wales in 1646. By 1648, when only 16, she became engaged to Colonel James Philips of Tregibby, and settled in her husband's house, the Priory next to St Mary's Church, Cardigan.

From that time onwards, Katherine Philips shared her time between London and Wales and her poetry reflects the two societies in which she mixed. She started to call herself 'Orinda', and friends and admirers of her work added the epithet 'matchless'.

This volume is considered to be the most important manuscript of Katherine Philips's poems. It contains fifty-three poems or fragments of poems and the titles of two other poems, all in her hand.

It appears that the manuscript book was originally used by Orinda for fair copies of her poems, possibly over a period of several years. Initially she wrote on every other page, and at some point she reversed the manuscript and began to use pages which had been left blank. A later owner of the manuscript has written notes between some of the poems.

To aid the user, the last half of the manuscript, which was reversed by Katherine Phillips, has also been reversed for display, and is shown in the order in which it was written. Blank pages have not been copied.

Much of the poetry in this volume is addressed to a select group of friends in west Wales and London. The themes of friendship and love occur often in her poetry and some of the poems are very moving, including one written following the death of her son in 1655.

Orinda's death, in 1664, occurred just as she was beginning to acquire a wide reputation as a poet and playwright. A collection of her work was published in the same year under the title 'Poems by the Incomparable Mrs K(atherine) P(hilips)'.

[Source: Patrick Thomas, 'The Collected works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, Volume I: The Poems (Cambridge, 1990)]