Life
1631-1664, ‘Matchless Orinda’; creator of Society of Friendship,
and diarist of Restoration Dublin; wrote Pompey, rhymed tragedy
after Corneille, presented to ‘great acclaim’ at Smock Alley,
10 Feb. 1663, with elaborate entr’acte involving costumes and scenery
of ancient Rome and Egypt; printed Dublin and London where it sold out;
first of long succession of French plays in translation during Restoration;
her version of Corneille’s Horace was completed by Sir John
Denham in 1668; GBI OCEL DNB OCIL
[ top ]
Works
Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs Katherine Philips, The
Matchless Orinda. To which is Added Monsieur Corneille’s Pompey and
Horace, Tragedies (London 1667); Thomas, Patrick, ed., The
Collected Works of Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda, 3 vols.
(Walden Road: Stump Cross 1990-93); The Literary Manuscripts of Katherine
Philips (‘Orinda’), 1631-1664, 4 reels 35mm. silver-halide
pos. microfilm (£250) [Adam Matthew Publ., Oxford St., Marlborough, Wiltshire,
England, SN8 1AP.]
[ top ]
Criticism
Philip W. Souers, The Matchless Orinda (USA: q.d.).
Christopher Morash, ‘A Night at the Theatre I: Pompey by Katherine Philips ... Tuesday, 10 February 1663’ [chap.], A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 (Cambridge UP 2002), pp.21-29.
W. S. Clark, Early Irish Stage (1955).
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), p.91.
Katherine Duncan-Jones, review of Stump Cross edition of her works (3rd vol.) in Times Literary Supplement (1 April 1994).
Carol Rumens, review of Germaine Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls (Penguin 1995), in Times Literary Supplement, 13.10.95, p29.
Germaine Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls (Penguin 1995), noticed by Brian Fallon, remarking that Katharine Philips [sic] is the treated as ‘a major writer of the Restoration period’. ((Irish Times, 28.9.1996.)
[ top ]
Notes
Sir John Gilbert’s account of Smock Alley (History of the City of Dublin,
) begins with ‘Orinda’; Dublin records show that a Mr Lee, chorister
of Christ Church Cathedral, was reprimanded for singing in it; it is not
clear whether Philips’s or Sir Edmund Waller’s Pompey
was the more popular version (in 1678); Lady Anne Dungannon was ‘the
excellent Lucasia’, and Lady Anne Boyle, ‘the adored Valeria’;
John Keats copied a poem of Katherine Philips in a letter to John Reynolds
(Sept. 1817), ascribing to it ‘the most delicate fancy of the Fletcher
kind’. BIBL, See Fidelis Morgan, Female Wits (1979), Chap
I.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)