SOURCE: "Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda," in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, The University of Georgia Press, 1987, pp. 566–608.

In the following excerpt, Hageman provides an overview of Philips's career and works.

Because her poem "On the First of January 1657" includes the statement that God has "By moments number'd out the precious sands, / Till [the poet's life] is swell'd to six and twenty years," students of Katherine Philips have assumed that her actual birth date was January 1, 1631/1632. The accuracy of that precise date remains unvalidated, but church records do reveal that the future poet was baptized at Saint Mary Woolchurch in London on January 11 of that year. Her mother was Katherine Fowler, née Katherine Oxenbridge, daughter of Daniel Oxenbridge, a doctor of physic and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London; her father was James Fowler, a prosperous London...