SOURCE: Revard, Stella P. “Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and the Female Pindaric.” In Representing Women in Renaissance England, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, pp. 227-41. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Revard compares critiques by male contemporaries of Philips and Aphra Behn.

In 1683, Triumphs of Female Wit appeared on the London scene, a slender volume that contained three Pindaric odes and a “Preface to the Masculine Sex” defending the right of women to pursue learning and most especially to use their wit to compose poetry. The first ode, “The Emulation,” purports to be “Written by a Young Lady” and argues the case for female poets, maintaining that “the Muses gladly will their aid bestow, / And to their Sex their charming Secrets show” (5).¹ The ode following, ascribed to a Mr. H, challenges not only the rights the Young Lady claims for her sex...