A New Manuscript Compilation of Katherine Philips: The Commonplace Book of Robert Mathewes

摘要

When Katherine Philips died in 1664 at the age of thirty-two her poems were circulated primarily in manuscript and had been published collectively only in a single unauthorized edition. By the end of the century she was celebrated amongst the nation's finest poets by both male and female writers, her posthumous success driven and cemented by an impressive folio volume of her works published in 1667 and expanding manuscript and print readerships. Philips was regarded as one of the most influential female poets of the period: writing in a range of poetic forms and genres, her works widely read in both manuscript and print, she heralded the beginnings of 'a coherent and self-conscious tradition of women's writing in English'. Unlike her contemporaries Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn, Philips was seen as a chaste and virtuous female poet, an exemplar of female authorship who avoided the taint of eccentricity that surrounded Cavendish, and the charges of immodesty and lewdness often levelled against Behn, the first professional female writer.