Anne Killigrew, "A Grace for Beauty, and a Muse for Wit," according to the publisher of her verse, was one of the maids of honor to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York (and later queen of James II), in the court of Charles II and was noted as both poet and painter. She was celebrated by John Dryden in the ode "To the Pious Memory Of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the two Sister-Arts of Poësie, and Painting," which introduced the volume of her poems.

Killigrew's fame rests on this single volume of poetry, a collection of verse probably composed over relatively few years, as she died young. Although one scholar, Margaret J. M. Ezell, describes Killigrew as "the female poet most celebrated by her contemporaries," such an assertion is probably more the product of the hyperbole of Dryden's ode than of...