Anne Killigrew

Early life and inspiration

Anne Killigrew was born in early 1660, before the Restoration, at St Martin's Lane in London. Her mother Judith Killigrew was a talented musician who played the lute and read Shakespeare. Her father Dr. Henry Killigrew published several sermons and poems as well as a play called The Conspiracy. Her two paternal uncles were also published playwrights. Sir William Killigrew (1606–1695) published two collections of plays. Thomas Killigrew (1612–1683) not only wrote plays but held a royal patent for the King's Company, and built the theatre now known as Drury Lane.

Her family, including her uncles William and Thomas, had close connections with the Stuart Court, serving Charles I, Charles II, and his Queen, Catherine of Braganza.

Her grandfather, Robert Killigrew, was knighted by King James I in 1603, and appointed Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Henrietta Maria in 1630.

Her father Henry Killigrew was a chaplain to Charles I, and chaplain and almoner to James, Duke of York (the future James II).

Following the Restoration, Henry Killigrew became Master of the Savoy.

One of her aunts, also named Anne Killigrew (1607-1641), was appointed Lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria beginning in 1631 and Dresser to the Queen beginning in April 1637.

Another aunt, Elizabeth Boyle, served as a Lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria, and bore an illegitimate daughter to Charles I as of 1651, while he was still in exile.

Anne Killigrew's mother, Judith Killigrew, was a lady-in-waiting to Charles II's queen Catherine of Braganza.

The younger Anne Killigrew is listed as one of six Maids of Honour to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, as of 1683.

The Poet and the Painter

Anne Killigrew excelled in multiple media, which was noted by contemporary poet, mentor, and family friend, John Dryden in his dedicatory ode to her. He addresses her as "the Accomplisht Young LADY Mrs Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the two Sister-Arts of Poësie, and Painting." Indeed, Dryden uses Killigrew's accomplishments in the two sister arts as a major organizing feature of his Ode.

Scholars believe that Killigrew painted a total of 15 paintings.

Both her poems and her paintings emphasize women and nature, and many of her paintings display biblical and mythological imagery. Several of her poems reference her own paintings, including

"St. John Baptist Painted by her self in the Wilderness, with Angels appearing to him, and with a Lamb by him",

"HERODIAS Daughter presenting to her Mother St. JOHN's Head in a Charger, also Painted by her self", and

"On a Picture Painted by her self, representing two Nimphs of DIANA's, one in a posture to Hunt, the other Batheing."

A list of paintings, published for Admiral Killigrew's Sale in 1727, included

"Venus and Adonis";

"Satyr Playing the Pipe";

"Judith and Holiferness";

"A Woman's Head"; and

"Venus attired by the Graces".

Killigrew was skilled at portraits. James Winn has suggested that the faces of the Graces in "Venus attired by the Graces" resemble those in portraits known to be of Anne Finch, Mary of Modena and Anne Killigrew. Today, as few as four of her paintings are known to exist. They include a self-portrait and a portrait of James, Duke of York.

Critical reception

Contemporaries

John Dryden's famous, extolling ode praises Killigrew for her beauty, virtue, and literary and artistic talent. Dryden was one of several contemporaries who wrote in praise of Killigrew after her death, and the posthumous collection of her work published in 1686 included additional poems commending her literary merit, irreproachable piety, and personal charm. Killigrew's virtue and poetic talent are also emphasized in poems by her contemporaries John Chatwin and Edmund Wodehouse.

Samuel Johnson considered Dryden's ode "the noblest our language has produced." Horace Walpole was less enthusiastic, describing Dryden's ode as "an harmonious hyperbole".

Anthony Wood in his 1721 essay defends Dryden's praise of Killigrew, confirming that Killigrew "was equal to, if not superior" to any of the compliments lavished upon her. Furthermore, Wood asserts that Killigrew's poems must have been well received in her time, otherwise "her Father would never have suffered them to pass the Press" after her death.

Modern critiques of Dryden's Ode

The best known assessment of Killigrew's work, Dryden's ode, has received far more extensive literary analysis than Killigrew's own work. Critics have tended to assert that Dryden's praise is excessive. They have argued variously that Dryden's ode should be read as a formal exercise illustrative of Augustan sensibility,

as irony,

as a validation of poetry rather than of a person,

or as political allegory.

Robert Daly suggests that Dryden's ode should be read in the context of Dryden's beliefs about poetry as a moral force, and with an awareness of Dryden's involvement within a contemporary community of poets. Dryden viewed poets as teachers of moral truths, and repeatedly sought to celebrate and encourage other writers. Killigrew was significant to Dryden as a moral exemplar as well as a writer of poems, and is praised by him on both grounds and presented as a model for others. For Dryden, these are not separate issues but deeply connected: religion, morals, poetry and politics are fundamentally interrelated. Anne Killigrew may be a younger poet of lesser skill than Dryden, but she shares Dryden's "operative ethic". Seen in this light, as an "ethically sensitive poet", who was "a member of the community whose goals he sought to serve, she merited and received his best effort". In praising Killigrew and encouraging others to read her work, Dryden "serve[s] the long cause of poetry."

In terms of structure, Dryden's ode follows the forms of an elegy as well as being an ode. Daly argues that Dryden's ode also should be read structurally as an implicit dialogue with parallels to a canonization trial. In such a structure the author is able to raise and then respond to possible objections to his apotheosis of Anne Killigrew. Within this reading, the opposition of ideas that others have interpreted as ironic becomes an understandable progression within an argument. Ann Messenger considers Daly's case to be "well argued".

Critiques of Killigrew's poetry

Killigrew's work includes religious and pastoral poems, as well as tributes to those in family and court circles, and intensely personal poems. It is not known who organized them for publication, but the order may be somewhat chronological. The poems are also grouped by poetic genre, which displays their variety and Killigrew's versatility as a poet. The first of Killigrew's poems is an unfinished epic, in which Alexander is challenged by Amazons! Epigrams are grouped together, as are pastorals, philosophical poems, poems that reference her own paintings, and other personal poems. Occasional poems appear throughout. "The arrangement of her verse, then, reinforces the impression that she viewed herself ... as a serious beginning poet, exploring all the facets of her craft."

Those who criticize Killigrew for focusing on conventional topics, such as death, love, and the human condition, ignore the social conventions of her time. "Women could not speak in the voices of bard, theologian, scholar, or courtly lover" but were largely limited to "tones of private life". Like Katherine Philips and Anne Finch, Killigrew generally writes as if for a private audience, on private themes. This strategy was often adopted even when the underlying subject had implications for the public and for politics.

The very poetic structures that women chose reflected this and helped them to avoid charges of inappropriate self-display. As Margaret Anne Doody has observed, iambic tetrameter was often used by Augustan women poets. Such a meter was not associated with male classical learning or intellectual dominance; rather it supported casualness, individuality, and originality. John Dryden's statement, in his "Ode To the Pious Memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew," that "Art she had none, yet wanted none, / For Nature did that want supply", may reflect such a distinction between "artificial" and "natural" poetic forms. Such qualities continue to connect Killigrew and other women poets of her time with modern readers. In many of her poems, she achieves a timeless quality.

Similarly, the pastoral form was seen as less intellectual and thus "safe" for the use of women poets. It is important to recognize, then, that Killigrew overturns a number of the form's well-established conventions in her pastoral poems. Unlike male pastoral poets who tended to voice male characters, Killigrew divides her dialogue between males and females, giving women the chance to initiate and control the discourse. "Her female voices, often rhetorically powerful, become the dominant orators in her pastoral dialogues." Both the gender and the authority of the speaker are breaks with convention. Traditionally submissive, the female speakers in Killigrew's pastorals achieve a position of power and self-control vis-a-vis traditionally dominant male speakers.

Authorship question

In the 1686 edition of Killigrew's Poems, the last three poems are proceeded by a note: "These Three following ODES being found among Mrs Killigrews Papers, I was willing to Print though none of hers." The poems in question are:

Cloris Charmes, Dissolved by EUDORA.

Upon a Little Lady Under the Discipline of an Excellent Person.

On the Soft and Gentle Motions of Eudora.

Some have argued that these three poems are stylistically consistent with Killigrew's other works. However, as Carol Barash states, "there is no archival evidence to establish who actually wrote them."

An early death

Killigrew died of smallpox in 1685, when she was only 25 years old. She was buried in the chancel of the Savoy Chapel (dedicated to St John the Baptist) on 15 June 1685. A monument was built in her honour but later destroyed by a fire. Her mother, Judith Killigrew, was also buried there, as of 2 February 1683.

Writing

Editions

Killigrew, Anne (1686). Poems. London: Printed for Samuel Lowndes.

Killigrew, Anne (1967). Morton, Richard (ed.). Poems (1686). A facsimile reproduction with an introduction. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints.

Killigrew, Anne (2003). Hoffmann, Patricia (ed.). Anne Killigrew / selected and introduced. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Killigrew, Anne (2013). Ezell, Margaret J.M. (ed.). "My rare wit killing sin": poems of a Restoration courtier (PDF). Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 September 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2021.