Today on the site I”m pleased to welcome Norena Shopland, author of My Love All Love Excels, the biography of Katherine Philips: the seventeenth-century Welsh poet whose love for two women dominated her life. Before we get to the post, here’s a little more info on the book:
Katherine Philips: the first woman to have a play commercially produced; a seventeenth-century poet writing about love, society and relationships during the tumultuous years of the English Civil War. But as with many early women writers, she has been largely forgotten by historians, and she slipped into obscurity a few decades after her death in 1664.
She lived in violent times; a Royalist while her husband was a Parliamentarian. With the restoration of the monarchy she faced a choice, leave him to his fate or save him. Yet it is her love for two Welsh women that dominated Katherine’s life, and these relationships were writ large in her poems to the point where scandal, detailed for the first time in this book, threatened to destroy her reputation.
My Love All Love Excels is an extraordinary account of a remarkable writer who was deeply passionate, complex and loyal. A woman who lived life on her own terms.
Buy it: Parthian Books | Bookshop (November preorder)
And here’s the post, by Norena Shopland:
Same-sex relationships between women in the historic past are often harder to find than those of men. Many that do exist in queer history are there because of what was written about them, rather than because we hear from the individuals themselves.
Katherine Philips is different. She wrote openly of her love for two women.
Born in London in 1631, she moved to Wales while still a teenager, living with her mother and step-siblings in the splendid Picton Castle, in Pembrokeshire. She had been writing poetry from an early age, and her earliest to have survived were written at Picton Castle. One casting scorn on marriage:
“A marryd state affords but little ease:
The best of husbands are so hard to please.
This in wifes Carefull faces you may spell,
Tho they desemble [sic] their misfortunes well.”
In her time, Katherine’s poetry was widely admired. And today, she is recognised as one of the earliest notable female poets in the world. Her style of writing was favourably compared to male poets of the day, and she was nicknamed ‘The Welsh Sappho’, in honour of the first famous female poet.
Katherine lived during the violent Civil War (1642-1651) conflict, and while her husband James was a devoted Parliamentarian, she was a devoted Royalist, but as with many families whose politics differ, they made it work. As with many marriages of this time, it was a companionate marriage, and while she was fond of James, her poetry to him lacks the passion she expresses for the women she loved.
While at school in London, Katherine had a close friend, Mary Aubrey, who was to become one of Katherine’s great loves. Their relationship was something of a turbulent one, and we only have Katherine’s side of the story. From her poems, we can gather that she seemed to want more from the relationship than Mary could give, and it caused a series of rifts. Rifts which caused Katherine great distress, and she recorded her anguish in her poetry.
As Mary began to drift away from her, Katherine’s new friendship with Anne Owen, who lived across the river at Picton Castle, began to blossom. For ten years, they remained close, and some of Katherine’s most famous poems were to Anne, including ‘To my Excellent Lucasia, on our friendship, 17th July 1651’ (Lucasia was Anne’s pastoral name, a bit like an avatar today):
“I did not live until this time
Crowned my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee …
This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept,
So that the world believed
There was a soul the motions kept;
But they were all deceived.
For as a watch by art is wound
To motion, such was mine:
But never had Orinda found
A soul till she found thine;
Which now inspires, cures and supplies,
And guides my darkened breast:
For thou art all that I can prize,
My joy, my life, my rest.”
This poem has long been a favourite in lesbian poetry anthologies.
Katherine’s love was all-consuming, and as these poems were shared around, people began to whisper of sapphism, and a sex scandal loomed, putting Katherine at great risk. Mary and Anne both struggled with all these outward signs of passion that were pulling their names into the public gaze, and arguments followed. Nevertheless, Katherine managed to repair her troubled relationship with Anne so much so that when Anne remarried and moved to Ireland, Katherine decided to accompany the happy couple! She remained with Anne and her husband for a year.
Katherine was a remarkable woman, the first to have a play commercially produced; a seventeenth-century poet of distinction; one of the first people to detail the art of translation; the list goes on. But as with many early women writers, she has been largely forgotten by historians, and she slipped into obscurity a few decades after her death in 1664. This new biography My Love all Love Excels (Parthian Books) details Katherine’s roller-coaster life.
***
Norena Shopland specialises in diverse history with books including Forbidden Lives: LGBT stories from Wales which celebrates Welsh LGBTQ+ history, and A History of Women in Men’s Clothes: from cross-dressing to empowerment. In 2021 the Welsh Government commissioned Shopland to deliver LGBTQ+ training to local Welsh libraries, museums, and archives. An offshoot was the Welsh County LGBTQ+ Timeline Collection, the only country in the world to have this kind of detailed local history.
