ABSTRACT
Katherine Philips was born in 1632, married in 1648, became a literary celebrity in 1663, and died in 1664. But 1651, the year of Worcester, Limerick, and Leviathan, should stand out in any study of her career as a poet. It marks her first publication of a poem ('To the Memory of the most
Ingenious and Vertuous Gentleman Mr. WIL: CARTWRIGHT, my much valued Friend,' in an edition of William Cartwright's Comedies), her composition of most of the poems for which she is now famous, and finally her conception of a 'design ... to unite all those of her acquaintance' -in the words of Sir Edward Dering, whom she called 'the worthy Silvander' - into one societie, and by the bands of friendship to make an alliance more firme then what nature, our countrey or equall education can produce' (Thomas 11; my emphasis).
