SOURCE: Hobby, Elaine. “Romantic Love-Poetry.” In Virtue of Necessity: English Women's Writing, 1646-1688, Virago Press, Ltd., 1988, pp. 128-64.

In the following excerpt, Hobby examines Killigrew's collection of poems as a response to the male-defined conventions of courtly love poetry.

The writers who followed Katherine Philips, although they made frequent reference to her name, did not share her emphasis on women's friendship. Their poems, by contrast, addressed the vagaries of romantic love between men and women as it was described (or constructed) by courtly love conventions. In taking this as their subject-matter, they were at one level pursuing a quite acceptable course. A woman's main task, according to this male poetic orthodoxy, was to love and be lovable. A woman writing about love, therefore, was addressing herself to the issue that should be central to her existence. Composing such poetry, especially if it were to be set to music...