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Katherine Philips
(1632-1664)

Active: 1651-1664 in England, Wales, Ireland, Britain, Europe

(Katherine Fowler)

By Frances Malpezzi (Arkansas State University)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: England, Wales, Ireland, Britain, Europe
  • Born In: England, Britain, Europe
  • Activity: Poet, Playwright, Translator, Woman of Letters

Life, Works and Times

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Though Katherine Philips’ life was all too brief, her accomplishments as poet, dramatist, and translator are not insignificant. Her corpus includes over 120 poems. While most of these are original, several are translations or adaptations. “A Country Life,” for example, is based on Horace’s “Beatus ille.” She also has several translations of poems from Italian and French, including Antoine-Girard de Saint-Amant’s “La Solitude.” In addition to writing and translating poetry, she translated two plays by Pierre Corneille, Pompey and Horace. As a result of these efforts, she is credited with being the first female to have a work staged in Britain. Philips also wrote numerous letters to friends, some of which were publis

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First published 04 January 2005

Citation: Malpezzi, Frances. "Katherine Philips". The Literary Encyclopedia. 4 January 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3551, accessed 9 February 2010.]