Poems By the most deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda. To which is added Monsieur Corneilles Pompey & Horace, Tragedies. With several other Translations out of French by Philips, Katherine - 1667

Printed: 1667. 1631-1664 Folio, 7 x 11.25 in. First sanctioned edition, enlarged, preceded by a pirated and suppressed edition of 1664. p2, A2 a-f2, B-Z2, Aa-Zz2, Aaa-Zzz2, Aaaa-Mmmm2( final leaf blank and original) The portrait of Katherine Philips is bound opposite the title.Almost all copies noted in auction records are cropped, with the portrait shaved or mounted. This copy has fared better, with half-inch margins or better around the portrait. This copy is bound in contemporary boards, which have been recently rebacked. The daughter of a London merchant, Katherine Fowler [her maiden name] was probably the first English woman poet to have her work published. She married a gentleman of substance from Cardigan, James Philips, and seems to have moved effortlessly into the literary circle adorned by Vaughan, Cowley, and Jeremy Taylor. She was best known by her pseudonym 'Orinda' and the name appears on the collection of her Letters, which give a useful picture of the early seventeenth-century literary world. Her translation of Corneille's 'Pompee' was performed in Dublin in 1663 and a collection of her verses was published posthumously in 1664." (Stapleton)Mrs. Philips' poems were circulated in manuscript, and secured for her a considerable reputation. The surreptitious quarto edition produced in 1664 caused her much annoyance, and Marriott, the publisher, was obliged to withdraw it from sale, and publicly to express his regret for having issued it. Some trouble was taken, it would appear, to destroy the copies, which would account for its rarity. In the preface of the 1667 edition, reference is made to the 'false edition,' and a long letter from the author in relation to it is quoted.This is perhaps the most famous English collection of poems by a woman prior to 1700.P.W. Souers, in his critical biography of Katherine Philips, asserts for her the right to be historically the first English poetess-"In her, for the first time in the history of English letters, a woman was received into the select company of poets." Jeremy Taylor dedicated to her his "Discourse on the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship;" Abraham Cowley, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Thomas Flatman, the Earl of Roscommon, and the Earl of Cork and Orrery all celebrated her talent, and Dryden could pay no higher compliment to Anne Killigrew than to compare her to Orinda. Keats, in a letter to Reynolds in 1817, quotes her verses with approval.