I focus on the construction of Katherine Philips’ contradictory poetic authorship in the paratext and poetry of Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips the Matchless Orinda (1667), as well as on her eighteenth-century manuscript reception in Thomas Corbett’s MS Rawl. poet. 173. I argue that the paratext of Poems (1667) uses the rhetorics of modesty, originality, and royalism to construct Philips’ authorship through contradiction, with her poems focusing on her modesty and royalism, while MS Rawl. poet. 173 exemplifies a compiler reading Philips’ authorship through the rhetorics of modesty and originality as established by print editions of her work.