Orinda and Palaemon: Katherine Philips and Francis Finch, 1650–ca. 1660

abstract:Francis Finch (d. ca. 1660) was a poet, a barrister, and a significant member of the coterie of the poet Katherine Philips (1632–1664). This essay presents previously unrecognized evidence of his relationship to Philips, in the form of three letters from Finch to his half-sister Frances Clifton. These letters give new information about Finch’s contact with Philips in 1650 and about the practices of naming in her coterie. The essay’s broader aim is to offer the first full account of Finch’s life and work, and his influence on Philips. It argues that Finch’s 1654 prose discourse, Friendship, should be located among a cluster of responses to the philosophy of Hobbes in his circle. Finch emerges as an author with a distinct, hitherto unrecognized, intellectual project, echoes of which appear in Philips’s poetry.