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One of the most significant challenges for historians of queer identity is assessing the motivations, intentions and even desires of historical persons. Undoubtedly, there is a growing body of evidence around the lives of persons who, even in hostile socio-cultural contexts, lived openly queer lives (you can check out my earlier blog post on the opera star, Julie d’Aubigny, for one example). But in other cases, expressions of queer identity may be much more subtle for a host of reasons. Modern eyes may find it difficult to discern queer references which would have been detectable to contemporary audiences of a given time period or culture. Similarly, parsing out sexual and gender identity in historical contexts while accounting for modern biases and preconceptions is its own task.
The English poet Katherine Philips is one example of this ambiguity. Since her life during the mid-17th century, Philips’ work has been assessed and re-assessed by multiple generations. Her literary depictions of female friendship, and perhaps female love, have earned her the title “the English Sappho” after the famous ancient Greek poet who is renowned for her contributions to lesbian literature.
Philips & the Society of Friendship
Katherine Fowler was born in London in 1632, amid the frenetic politics of Stuart England, to what we might consider a prosperous upper-middle class family today.[1] She was highly educated, and had reportedly read the Bible in full by the age of four. She was first married at the age of sixteen to James Philips, whose surname she ultimately published under. Some of her first poems from her mid-teenage years survive today; among these are lines which appear to question the value of marriage from a female perspective:
A marryd state affords but little ease / The best of husbands are so hard to please.
Whatever Philips’ true feelings for her husband for the duration of their eight-year union, their homestead in Cardiff became a cornerstone for both Philips’ literary career and, indeed, a broader English literary movement. In 1651, Philips founded the so-called “Society of Friendship” which, according to one source, was “based on the ideals of platonic friendship from French pastoral romance”.[2] Pastoral literature came in and out of vogue throughout early modern Europe, and centered on the notion of rustic, bucolic characters and lifestyles as uniquely innocent and liberated. The Society’s (mostly female) membership often assumed clever, theme-appropriate pen names. In Philips’ case, she took on the moniker “the Matchless Orinda”. It was through the Society of Friendship that Philips’ works, both in poetry and plays, would be formally published.
The “Friendship” Poems
Philips would go on to write 125 poems and complete a number of translations of European plays.[3] She was among the very few female writers of the 17th century to achieve public acclaim for her work among her contemporaries, and (through one of her translated works) she became the first woman to produce an English-language play that was professionally performed.[4] Today, however, she is best known for her so-called “friendship poems” written and dedicated to various members of her “Society”. One source notes that “[m]ost of Philips’s poetry revolves around the theme of friendship, and of private, personal relationships more generally as a retreat from the tumultuous public sphere.”[5] These poems offer intriguing insights into the intense value and devotion Katherine placed on her relationships with other women, and have led to speculation that these may have indicated expressions of desire – platonic, romantic, and otherwise. R.B. Parkinson, curator of the British Museum, has noted that “[Philips] wrote in praise of her relationships with women, and her passions now seem to many modern readers to exceed the norms of romantic friendship.”[6] He adds that a contemporary editor, reviewing Philips’ own work just a few years after her death, was the first to coin her “the English Sappho”.
“I’ve all the world in thee…”
Philips’ relationships with Anne Owen (aka “Lucasia”) and Mary Aubrey (“Rosania”) illustrate why these sapphic interpretations have endured. Sources suggest that Philips mourned both women’s various marriages in her works, writing that “one may generally conclude the Marriage of a Friend to be the Funeral of a Friendship.”[7] To Anne, she wrote one of her most famous poems:
I did not live until this time
Crowned in my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee. . .
For thou art all that I can prize,
My joy, my life, my rest.
No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth
To mine compared can be:
They have but pieces of the earth,
I’ve all the world in thee.
Of course, this poem (and others like it) are far from definitive proof of what we might think of today as homoerotic, or necessarily indicative of sexual desire. But queer desire, connection and relationships have never been defined solely by romantic longing or sexual action. Another interpretation of Philips’ work perhaps suggests a queerplatonic relationship (QPR). A QPR is “a close non-sexual, non-romantic relationship that is beyond what most would consider to be a friendship. It consists of emotional commitment and prioritization that is typically seen in a romantic relationship.”[8] QPRs are typically associated with the asexual and aromantic communities, but any person can engage in a QPR. Older terminology for QPRs includes “romantic friendship” (prominent in the 19th century), and was often used to describe relationships of this type between women.[9] The intense, devoted friendships that Philips enjoyed with her fellow writers, friends and Society members may reflect a QPR model moreso than a conventional sexual or romantic relationship.
Philips’ death in 1664, purportedly due to smallpox, was a tragic and untimely loss for English literature. Despite only living to her early 30s, Philips’ extant work continues to impress and inspire today. Fortunately, “the English Sappho” has been rediscovered by recent generations as our collective understanding of the complexity of human desire, attraction and attachment has deepened. Even if modern terminology to represent the vast spectrum of queer experiences would have been foreign to Philips, the models and relationships themselves might not have been. It seems fitting, therefore, to give Philips the final word:
Come, my Lucasia, since we see
That Miracles Mens faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
To the dull angry world let’s prove
There’s a Religion in our Love.[10]
[1] Elizabeth H. Hageman, “Katherine Philips,” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/katherine-philips.
[2] Francis Booth, “The Matchless Orinda — Early English Poet & Playwright Katherine Philips”, March 17, 2021, https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-musings/the-matchless-orinda-early-english-poet-playwright-katherine-philips/.
[3] Hageman, ibid.
[4] Booth, ibid.
[5] “Katherine Philips”, The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/people/katherine-philips.
[6] R.B. Parkinson, “Introduction: ‘A Great Unrecorded History’”, A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013.
[7] The British Library, ibid.
[8] “Queerplatonic Relationships”, LGBTQIA+ Wiki, https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Queerplatonic_relationship.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Katherine Philips, “Friendship’s Mystery, To my Dearest Lucasia”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44861/friendships-mystery-to-my-dearest-lucasia.