Archipelagic Orinda? Katherine Philips and the Writing of Welsh Women’s Literary History

Abstract

This essay engages in current debates concerning the writing of early modern women’s ‘archipelagic’ literary history with specific reference to the 17th‐century poet Katherine Philips (1632–1664), known as the ‘matchless Orinda’. Taking into account literary scholarship on both women’s writing and British studies, the essay argues that both Wales and Anglophone Welsh women writers need to be incorporated into the debate if we are to have a genuinely inclusive archipelagic picture of early modern literary practices. The essay asks in what ways Katherine Philips can be discussed as a Welsh writer in an archipelagic frame and how this reassessment might impact on how we read her poetry. Further areas of investigation opened up by taking Katherine Philips as a case study include the extent to which Anglophone and Welsh women writers can be compared in the early modern period. The conclusion raises the possibility that there may have been little contact between the two literatures of Wales as practiced by early modern women writers.

Whither the archipelago? Stops, starts, and hurdles on the four nations front

“…Kerrigan shows Daniel Defoe to be another, whose foray to Scotland in the prelude to formal union is discussed in Archipelagic English . Sarah Prescott has brought the archipelagic paradigm to bear on Katherine Philips in order to reinstate the importance to her writing of Wales, where she resided the vast majority of her life. Prescott identifies the values of archipelagic criticism as providing “a theoretical, spatial model of dynamic interaction between writers and their contexts that can fundamentally revise our expectations of those writers and their significance” (, 52).…”

“…Yet, for an archetypally archipelagic writer whose tentacles reached across three of the four nations, the significance of her rootedness in Wales has been neglected. Given that her earliest dateable writing occurs at the same time as her marriage, Prescott posits: “In contrast to the view that Philips retired into rural obscurity after her marriage, it would appear that her married life in Wales actually enabled her to become a writer” (, 54). Gender as well as geographical bias are at work here, of course.…”