SOURCE: Swaim, Kathleen M. “Matching the ‘Matchless Orinda’ to Her Times.” In 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era. Vol. 3, edited by Kevin L. Cope, pp. 77-108. New York: AMS Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Swaim compares Philip's poetry with verse by John Milton and John Donne to analyze her unique contribution to English literature.

Among the most prominent names that literary archaeology into England's earliest women writers has brought forward is that of Katherine Philips (1631/2-64), whose engaging sobriquet, “The Matchless Orinda,” offers a quick glance into the drawing-rooms of a lost cultural moment. Her contemporaries took Philips very seriously indeed as a poet, a moral model, a pioneer, an inspiration and a nonpareil, the English Sappho, the Muse's darling and equal. Besides adding the claim “matchless” to the “Orinda” she chose for herself, John Oldham (1653-83), for example, includes Philips as one of...